Colm Kiernan

Colm Kiernan
Resting place	Lakeside Memorial Park, Kanahooka
Occupation	Historian, writer
Education	BA, MA (Melb) BA, MA (Cantab) PhD (UNSW)

Colm Patrick Kiernan (24 November 1931– 27 March 2010) was an historian and writer.

Historian

In 1964 Colm Kiernan was appointed foundation Lecturer in History at the University of Wollongong, Australia. There began a long and successful career as an academic and researcher in both European and Australian History, which encompassed his writing of two volumes of Science and the Enlightenment of 18th Century France, the biographies of Arthur Calwell and Archbishop Daniel Mannix, and his last book, Australia and Ireland – Bicentenary Essays 1788-1988.

Irish background

Kiernan was the only son of Dr Thomas Joseph Kiernan, Irish diplomat and academic , and the Irish ballad singer Delia Murphy.

He received a classical education at boarding school in Clongowes, Ireland, the school which James Joyce describes in his writing “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man”. During this time, his father was posted to be the Irish Ambassador to the Vatican and his family was presented to the Pope. It was a grand occasion, and his parents and three sisters were photographed for the local newspapers. Kiernan used to say the only thing he remembered from that occasion was that he was allowed to play on the Pope’s golden telephone. He was a strong believer in Catholicism, and having been educated by the Jesuits, he fully understood the Church laws and decrees. His faith was more an intellectual spiritual belief than a practical religiosity, but it was a very deep commitment from which he never wavered. He used to say that in boarding school he had attended enough Masses to last him the rest of his life.

Poem 'For CK at his Christening'

written by Irish poet Daniel Kelleher for Colm Kiernan

We wish to the new child,
A heart that can be beguiled,
By a flower,
That the wind lifts,
As it passes.
If the storms break for him,
May the trees shake for him,
Their blossoms down.

In the night that he is troubled,
May a friend wake for him,
So that his time be doubled,
And at the end of all loving and love
May the Man above,
Give him a crown.

Poignantly this poem was read again in 1999 by Senator Edward Kennedy on the death of John Kennedy junior in a plane crash.
Senator Kennedy recalled, “The Irish ambassador recited a poem to John's father and mother soon after John was born. I can hear it again now; at this different and difficult moment [poem read]. We thank the millions who have rained blossoms down on John's memory. He and his bride have gone to be with his mother and father, where there will never be an end to love. He was lost on that troubled night -- but we will always wake for him, so that his time, which was not doubled, but cut in half, will live forever in our memory, and in our beguiled and broken hearts. [1]

Irish Australian

When his father was appointed as the first Irish Ambassador to Australia, in 1946, Kiernan finished his schooling at St Patrick's College, Goulburn. After completing his BA and MA at the University of Melbourne, he married Joan Louise McKay (1935–1992) on August 24, 1954 at St Christopher’s Church in Manuka, ACT. They traveled to Cambridge, England, where Kiernan converted his degrees to a BA, MA (Cantab). Their first child was born in Cambridge, their second in Dublin, Ireland, and the third in Wollongong. Kiernan was the first PhD completion in the Arts Faculty for the University of New South Wales, Kensington.

While appointed Professor of Australian History at University College Dublin in Ireland, Kiernan researched the Irish background of many Australian political and historical figures including Henry Handel Richardson and Peter Lalor. He was well versed in Irish, Gaelic, Celtic, Latin and old English and could translate many very difficult texts including those written by the Bronte sisters, also of Irish descent, particularly Charlotte who wrote in a mixture of Gaelic and old English.

He spoke fluent Italian, Spanish and French and loved language, literature, poetry and was passionate about all things Irish Australian. He married Susan Margaret Mayer, his second wife, on June 11, 1994. They had a son. Kiernan is survived by his wife Susan, his four children and nine grandchildren.

Bibliography

• The enlightenment and science in eighteenth-century France (1973)
• Calwell : a personal and political biography (1978) ISBN 0170051854
• Ireland and Australia (1984) ISBN 0207150087
• Daniel Mannix and Ireland (1984) ISBN 0949681148
• Australia and Ireland, 1788-1988 : bicentenary essays (1986) ISBN 0717114740
• The Irish in the Labor movement (1991) ISBN 0730591557