More than 30 years ago, Nick Harman, who died recently aged 90, gave up a high-flying career in journalism in London and moved to Tully Lodge near Louisburgh in Co Mayo, a house which, together with adjoining lands and a stretch of the Bunowen river, had been leased and owned by the Harman family for four generations.
For Nick, Tully was a refuge, a place he always felt he belonged.
He’d spent time in Louisburgh as a child before the second World War, going to the local school, making friendships that would last a lifetime.
“I remember the thrill of journeys out west as a child – leaning out of the train window going from Castlebar to Westport, waiting to catch a glimpse of Croagh Patrick and knowing I was coming home.”
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Nick was born in London on May 10th 1933. Both Charles, Nick’s father, and Jerry, his elder brother, were eminent members of the British judiciary.
After school at Eton – one of Britain’s leading private schools – it seemed Nick was also destined for the law.
Service in the British army – Nick was among the last of the conscription generation – had a deep effect. He was shipped to Korea as a 19-year-old officer, part of the UN forces.
“For upper-class lads like me the role was absolutely plain: to give clear orders even when nobody quite knew what the point of them was, and to seem in control even when most confused or afraid.”
On patrol one night there was hand to hand fighting with Chinese forces: Nick was seriously injured in the arm, legs and chest. Everyone else on his patrol was killed.
After a lengthy recovery period and study at Cambridge University, he decided on journalism rather than the law.
He worked first in Paris and was a fluent French speaker. In time Nick became one of the most accomplished reporters of his generation, working for among others, the BBC Panorama programme and the Economist magazine.
When Nick moved to Mayo he continued his journalism, editing a newsletter on Africa, a continent he knew well and loved.
He was the author of two books, one on Dunkirk, debunking many of the myths that had grown up around what was one of the biggest Allied defeats of the second World War, the other detailing the haphazard life of Charles Stokes, a 19th-century Irish adventurer in Africa.
Nick was a true polymath, interested in everything and everybody. Talk amidst the organized chaos at Tully – Nick was frugal in his habits and for a long time avoided modern conveniences such as central heating – would range from the mating habits of the pine martin to a discussion of French poetry, from the fickleness of the Mayo weather to the latest ructions in some far-off capital.
Nick treasured his trees and mourned when storms brought down an oak or a sycamore. He became increasingly concerned about the decline in wildlife. The salmon, once so prolific in the Bunowen, became scarce – the curlews and lapwings all but disappeared from his land.
Nick was as much part of the Louisburgh landscape as the mist on the hills, the loosestrife and meadowsweet in springtime, the rust of the boglands in autumn.
He died in his bed at Tully on July 2nd, 2023. To the last he was looked after by devoted neighbours and by the local medical practice.
Nick is buried in the family plot in the old Church of Ireland graveyard in Louisburgh and is survived by Connie, his first wife and their children Eddie, Sam and Becky and by Emma, his second wife, and their son Jack.