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Mary Kenny is an author, journalist and broadcaster. She has a special interest in the relationship between England and Ireland, which she explored in her biography of William Joyce, Lord Haw-Haw, Germany Calling, and more specifically in her play Allegiance, which was premiered at the Edinburgh Festival in August 2006. Starring Mel Smith as Winston Churchill and Michael Fassbender as Michael Collins – and directed by Brian Gilbert - it had worldwide headlines when Mel Smith threatened to smoke the Churchillian cigar on stage in defiance of stern Scottish anti-smoking regulations. It was widely acclaimed by the London and Edinburgh critics, and a London production is expected later in 2007. A revised version of the text of Allegiance will be published by New Island Books in autumn 2007.

Mary is currently working on a study of the relations between the British monarchy and the Irish people, from Queen Victoria to Prince William, to be published in 2008.

Mary Kenny Full CV

Reviews

The Guardian: “This play asks serious and interesting questions…the stage is set for a showdown between British imperialism and Irish nationalism.”

'All jowls and petulant lower lip' ... Mel Smith as Churchill. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod

“The play asks…serious and interesting questions. Where is history really made? How are negotiations and treaties really thrashed out? How far do the personal lives of politicians affect the decisions they make and the deals they broker? Writer Mary Kenny goes at these questions hammer and tongs in a scenario that imagines what might have happened in a private meeting between the two men. Churchill, scion of the aristocracy, still believes in the Empire as ‘one of the great civilising missions of the world’. Collins, cast as a romantic hero by the British press, is lean, hungry and wolfish. These are men who inhabit not just different worlds but different universes, and the stage is set for a showdown between British imperialism and Irish nationalism.

“Yet Kenny suggests that even those on opposite sides of the negotiating table can discover common ground if they recognise the humanity in each other. Poetry brings them together …and grief bonds them in a relationship that has a touch of the father-and-son about it – and which also seals Collins’ fate.

“Michael Fassbender and Mel Smith are excellent, the latter all jowls and petulant lower lip so that he resembles a very clever baby. No smoke, but plenty of fire.” Lyn Gardner. The Guardian. 10 August 2006.

The Times: “A discussion as plausible as it is absorbing…pretty pertinent today”

“Kenny’s play involves the private meeting Churchill had with the Irish nationalist commander Michael Collins when he came to London to talk peace with the Lloyd George Government. I don’t think anyone knows precisely what occurred during an encounter that started in permafrost and ended in a surprising thaw – except, perhaps, that Churchill could smoke his trademark cigar in his own drawing room, something that Mel Smith decided not to do in deference to one of prissy Edinburgh’s more lunatic laws…

“[But]…considering Kenny is a tyro dramatist best known for her journalism, the discussion is mostly as plausible as it is absorbing…the wishfulness in the play doesn’t turn into sentimentality. Indeed, Kenny uses the meeting to suggest that personal rapport can lead to political breakthroughs, and to ask questions about the difference between terrorists and freedom fighters. And that’s pretty pertinent today.”
Benedict Nightingale. The Times. 8 August 2006.

The Independent: “Mary Kenny’s keenly imagined script gives Churchill the better lines in this sparky encounter….But Fassbender endows Collins with a magnetism and quiet intelligence, his forecasting of his death taking on a real poignancy.”

“Playing opposite the Greatest Englishman can’t be easy, but, as the rebel IRA leader with a mythical reputation Michael Fassbender has the unusual advantage of being a descendent of Michael Collins. At first both men edge cagily around the other, Collins railing against the Black and Tans – ‘so named,’ slips in Churchill smoothly, ‘purely for sartorial reasons.’

“There’s no denying that Mary Kenny’s keenly imagined script gives Churchill the better lines in this sparky encounter between British Imperialism and Irish Nationalism at its most potent. But Fassbender endows Collins with a magnetism and quiet intelligence, his forecasting of his death taking on a real poignancy…..Whatever unlikely alliance this encounter helped Churchill and Collins to form in the midst of these secret negotiations over the Irish question, Smith and Fassbender convey the increasingly warm relationship between the two men….They wistfully compare family notes, Collins smiling at the memory of the father he worshipped, Churchill blubbing about the death of a young daughter.”
Lynne Walker, The Independent (London). 9 August 2006.

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