Background
McCafferty was born in Derry, Northern Ireland, to Hugh and Lily McCafferty, and spent her early years in the Bogside area of Derry.
(Joanne Hayes, at 24 years of age, concealed the birth and...)
Joanne Hayes, at 24 years of age, concealed the birth and death of her baby in County Kerry, Ireland, in 1984. Subsequently she confessed to the murder, by stabbing, of another baby. All of the scientific evidence showed that she could not have had this second baby. The police nevertheless, insisted on charging her and, after the charges were dropped, continued to insist that she had given birth to twins conceived of two different men. A public tribunal of inquiry was called to examine the behaviour of the police and their handling of the case. The police, in defence of themselves and in justification of ""confessions"" obtained, called a succession of male experts on the medical, social and moral roman catholic fibre of Joanne Hayes. Her married lover detailed the times, places and manner of her love making. Using the ""twins"" theory as a springboard, the question was posed and debated ""Did she love this man or what was he and other men prepared to do with her?"" After six months of daily discussion among the men, the judge declared ""There were times when we all believed she had twins."" The treatment of Joanne Hayes, who stood accused of no crime, was a model for Irish male attitudes to woman. She was caught up in a time of rapid social change between two Irelands, an earlier Ireland in which the Catholic Church had held a moral monopoly and a new liberal and secular Ireland.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1855942135/?tag=2022091-20
(Journalist Nell McCafferty has been an iconic figure in I...)
Journalist Nell McCafferty has been an iconic figure in Ireland for over thirty years. Nell is the revealing story of the woman behind the image. Whether describing her challenging and tender relationship with her mother, Lily; her fears about being gay; war on the streets of her native Derry; the blossoming of feminism in Ireland; or the joy of finding a domestic haven with the love of her life, Nuala O'Faolain and the pain of losing it, McCafferty doesn't spare anyone, least of all herself, in telling the truth of her life. The result is Nell: a journey that is moving, funny, inspiring and often jaw-droppingly frank.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1844880133/?tag=2022091-20
McCafferty was born in Derry, Northern Ireland, to Hugh and Lily McCafferty, and spent her early years in the Bogside area of Derry.
In her journalistic work she has written for The Irish Press, The Irish Times, Sunday Tribune, Hot Press and The Village Voice. She was admitted to Queen"s University Belfast (QUB), where she took a degree in Arts. After a brief spell as a substitute English teacher in Northern Ireland and a stint on an Israeli kibbutz, she took up a post with The Irish Times.
She contributed the piece "Coping with the womb and the border" to the 1984 anthology Sisterhood Is Global: The International Women"s Movement Anthology, edited by Robin Morgan.
McCafferty lives in Ranelagh, an area of Dublin. McCafferty published her autobiography, Nell, in 2004.
Nell caused a controversy in 2010 with a radio declaration that the then Minister for Health Mary Harney was an alcoholic. This allegation led to a court case in which Mary Harney was awarded €450,000 the following year.
She has very rarely featured on radio or television in Ireland as a commentator since, despite being ever present in those media from 1990 onwards, but she has been featured on a number of recorded shows since.
The Irish Times wrote that "Nell"s distinctive voice, both written and spoken, has a powerful and provocative place in Irish society."
McCafferty was in a fifteen-year relationship with the late journalist Nuala O"Faolain.
(Joanne Hayes, at 24 years of age, concealed the birth and...)
(Journalist Nell McCafferty has been an iconic figure in I...)