Madam, – Both Anthony Jordan (April 25th) and Tim Pat Coogan (April 27th) have strongly criticised the promotion of my book, Judging Dev, by RTÉ and the Royal Irish Academy.
Mr Jordan, as a result of a Freedom of Information Act query, discovered that the Royal Irish Academy approached RTÉ with a business proposal concerning promotion of the book and that RTÉ accepted its proposal and agreed to base a radio series on the book.
Is Mr Jordan seriously suggesting that the Royal Irish Academy, because it receives State funding, should not seek to promote and publicise the books it publishes?
Is Tim Pat Coogan, as a self-described “practising author for almost half a century” completely unaware of publishers seeking airtime on RTÉ to promote their authors’ works?
Because it receives State funding, the Royal Irish Academy, quite rightly, comes under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act. If the Freedom of Information Act applied to private commercial publishers I have no doubt Mr Jordan and Mr Coogan would find a feast of correspondence seeking marketing opportunities for books.
Both Mr Jordan and Mr Coogan’s complaints, I believe, are motivated by other factors. Mr Coogan wrote two critical reviews of the Judging Dev book which, in my view, were fuelled by his personal antipathy to de Valera and because my book dared to challenge the conclusions of his own biography of de Valera. Mr Jordan, as he states in his letter, offered his own biography of William Cosgrave to the Department of Education for distribution to schools and he is annoyed it was rejected.
He fails to acknowledge that the Judging Dev book was deemed to be suitable for schools because of its inclusion of original documents, the study of which forms a part of the Leaving Certificate history curriculum. His biography of Cosgrave contains no such documents.
The Judging Dev project, including the book, website and radio series, was about communicating an important and controversial part of our history to as wide an audience as possible. Neither RTÉ nor the Royal Irish Academy need apologise for their role in facilitating that communication, and their partnership was no secret – both organisations’ logos appear on the book’s cover.
In my view, Mr Coogan’s assertion that the Judging Dev project was one “with an obvious . . . beneficial knock-on effect for Fianna Fáil” makes it clear he is incapable of distinguishing between past and present. He should not assume the same is true of others who are interested in Irish history. – Yours, etc,
DIARMAID FERRITER,
Boston College,
Chestnut Hill,
Massachusetts.