KEN MONAGHAN:KEN MONAGHAN, who has died aged 85, was a co-founder of the James Joyce Centre and the last surviving nephew of the writer. He passionately believed that the life and work of James Joyce should be made accessible to the ordinary reader, to which end he worked tirelessly for a quarter of a century.
It was through the voluntary efforts of Monaghan, his family and others that the 18th-century townhouse in which the centre is housed was restored to Georgian grandeur and eventually opened to the public in 1994.
He devised popular Joycean walking tours which continue today. The author of Joyce’s Dublin Family, he spoke at symposiums, seminars and Bloomsday events in Ireland and around the world. Stephen Joyce, grandson of James and trustee of the Joyce literary estate, accused him of “jumping on the bandwagon”. Shrugging off the gibe, he carried on as enthusiastically as ever.
Born in Oughterard, Co Galway, in 1925, he was one of three children of Jack Monaghan, a shopkeeper, and his wife Mary Kathleen (May) Joyce. “My mother was not welcomed into this family, who considered themselves to be a cut above buttermilk,” he wrote, “and no member of it attended the wedding which took place in Dublin.”
His father died when he was three and thereafter his mother’s life was a constant struggle, notwithstanding some good neighbours.
His mother, unlike other of her siblings, was proud of her eldest brother and had copies of Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
But she was conscious of Joyce’s reputation in Ireland as the “anti-Christ”, and advised her children that while they should never deny their relationship to him, they should not advertise it either.
Monaghan and his two sisters were educated to secondary level – he went to Terenure College – through a trust fund set up by their paternal grandmother. Attending university was out of the question and he made his career with the Hibernian Bank (later taken over by Bank of Ireland). After he was married in 1954 his mother joined him and his wife, Joan, at their home in Terenure, where she lived until her death in 1966.
When he retired from banking in 1987 he joined the board of directors of the James Joyce Centre. The centre’s premises at 35 North Great George’s Street had been due for demolition by Dublin City Council, but Senator David Norris successfully opposed the plan.
A sustained effort by Monaghan and his colleagues, assisted by EU and government funds as well as private donations, resulted in the transformation of a derelict shell to a splendid cultural institute.
It is a far cry from the Joyce family’s experience of Dublin’s north inner city. Monaghan’s walking tours retraced their steps, as they moved from one seedy lodging house to another in the area around Dorset Street and Phibsboro. He told participants the 11 years Joyce spent in the district were the making of him as a writer. “The life on the streets, the people he met, you’ll find them all in his writing. Had Jack Joyce been a good provider for his family, there would have been no Leopold or Molly Bloom, no Buck Mulligan, no Stephen Dedalus.”
Monaghan was proud of his uncle’s achievements. He described Joyce’s commitment to art and literature as his most praiseworthy trait. But it also was frightening, “because it seemed at times that he didn’t care who might get hurt in the process”.
Monaghan was 27 when he got his first copy of Ulysses, which was smuggled into the country. He had high praise for Sylvia Beach, who originally published it: “For me, every Bloomsday is also a Beachday.” The success of the James Joyce Centre delighted him: “I think my proudest moment was when I met three students in the library one afternoon, who wanted to glean further information on Finnegans Wake. They had come all the way from Ulan Bator!”
He was made an honorary trustee of the International James Joyce Foundation in 1992.
David Norris this week said: “He was without doubt the soul of the James Joyce Centre, genial, welcoming and informative, the ideal greeter of tourists and scholars.”
Predeceased by his first wife Joan, daughter Maeve and grandson Ali, he is survived by his wife Lucy, daughters Katherine, Siobhán, Helen and Judy, sons Niall and John and grandchildren Eva, Courtney, Cillian, Niall, Cian, and Dylan.
John Kenneth (Ken) Monaghan: born January 19th, 1925; died September 20th, 2010