Background
Kiernan was the only son of Doctor Thomas Joseph Kiernan, Irish diplomat and academic, and the Irish ballad singer Delia Murphy. During this time, his father was posted to be the Irish Ambassador to the Vatican and his family was presented to the Pope.
Career
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. 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 Manitoba”.
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.
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.
J. When his father was appointed as the first Irish Ambassador to Australia, in 1946, Kiernan finished his schooling at Street Patrick"s College, Goulburn. Their first child was born in Cambridge, their second in Dublin, Ireland, and the third in Wollongong.
Kiernan was the first Doctor of Philosophy 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 of many Australian political and historical figures including Henry Handel Richardson and Peter Lalor. He was well versed in Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Latin, and old English and could translate many very difficult texts including those written by the Brontë sisters, also of Irish descent, particularly Charlotte, who wrote in a mixture of Gaelic and old English. He spoke fluent Italian, Spanish, and French, loved language, literature, and poetry, and was passionate about all things.