Bernard Brendan Farrell was born in 1929 in Manchester to Irish-born parents. At an early stage his mother changed his name – though not on his birth certificate – to Brian to avoid confusion with his uncles Bernard and Brendan.
In 1939, when the second World War started, he was sent by his parents to live with family in Dublin. As a young Mancunian he found himself enrolled in the Irish-speaking Coláiste Mhuire on Parnell Square, a difficult transition since he spoke no Irish.
After leaving school he spent a short time as a clerical student with the Salesian order in Ballinakill, Co Laois. During this time he re-sat his Leaving Certificate, this time through English, showing his first signs of academic brilliance. He worked as a commercial traveller and set his sights on getting into university. In 1955, realising that he would have to wait two years to enter UCD’s cyclic BA evening programme, he took the courageous decision to enrol as a day student, supporting himself through part-time work.
From the outset, though in many ways an outsider, he liked UCD and with the passing years his relationship with the college was to be an important part of his life.
He chose history as his major and remembered this period with pleasure, describing the 1950s as the “golden age” of history in UCD with mentors such as TD Williams, Robin Dudley Edwards and Aubrey Gwynn.
Despite spending a lot of time with Dramsoc where he acquired some theatrical skills which he later used to great effect, he got a first in his BA and won the Mícheál Ó Cléirigh scholarship. Following his MA, a Smith-Hunt bursary enabled him to spend a year at Harvard which kindled his life-long passion for research and shifted his focus from history to government. Academic posts were scarce on his return to Dublin but he did get a job with the administration in UCD. One of his tasks was to manage adult education, which in the words of a former registrar, was seen as “rigid and undersubscribed” but was transformed by Farrell into “a flexible, student-friendly exercise with 2,000 students”.
In 1965 he achieved his ambition when he joined the emerging politics department at UCD.
Political science
Political science was a relatively new discipline in Ireland, with little published research and initially resented by some other departments. Farrell was to help change this and, along with JH Whyte, Basil Chubb and David Thornley he was to play a pioneering role in course development and research.
At a time when publishing was sometimes seen as an optional extra by some academics he began to produce what became a steady stream of scholarly but accessible work, including eight books and more than 50 articles ranging from a biography of Seán Lemass (his political hero ), Chairman or Chief on the role of taoiseach, The Irish Parliamentary Tradition, Electoral Behaviour and much more including many Thomas Davis lectures on radio
However writing was only part of his academic work and he was regarded as a superb teacher. One colleague wrote in the 2004 festschrift, Dissecting Irish Politics that "he took his teaching seriously. Each lecture was a performance, a drama to be enacted and enacted with enthusiasm. Sometimes he overdid it, 'hamming' for dramatic impact – a legacy maybe of his unfulfilled acting ambitions –but one way or another the students loved it and valued being lectured by somebody 'who was in the know'."
He helped transform the UCD politics department into a leading department with a reputation for good teaching, closeness to its students and good research.
While UCD was to remain central to his life he was also emerging as one of the stars of the new television service. By the mid-1960s he had become a national figure, a household name through a series of new TV programmes, 7 Days and Prime Time.
Much has been written about what it was that made him such an outstanding broadcaster. He was technically more than competent, at ease in the studio and calm in moments of crisis. His language was elegant, his descriptive powers rich and he had a great studio and screen “presence”.
But it was more than that. It was his authority, which was always based on careful preparation, his wide knowledge and his audience seeing him as a dedicated public service broadcaster asking tough questions on their behalf . As has been noted in his festschrift it "was his sense of context, the clear-eyed view of the ethical and constitutional rules underpinning politics that above all gave his work its distinctive edge".
At Harvard
In 1955 while at Harvard he married Marie-Thérèse Dillon, a grand-daughter of the last leader of the Irish Party, John Dillon. It was a fulfilling and happy marriage of 59 years, never more evident than in Marie-Thérèse’s loving support during his last long illness,
He is survived by his wife and daughters Miriam, Naomi and Rachel and by sons Bernard, David, Brian and Theo.