Sir, – Frank McNally's interesting "Irishman's Diary" (June 5th) recalls the infamous libel action taken by the poet Patrick Kavanagh against the Leader in 1954.
As late as the autumn of 1966, 12 years after that trial, Kavanagh's anger over that disastrous fiasco still burned strongly in his heart, as this writer was to experience in an encounter in the Bailey Bar in Dublin. At the time I had just graduated from UCD with a degree in history. I joined Kavanagh's company in the Bailey and was carrying a copy of the literary magazine Envoy.
Kavanagh spotted the magazine, asked to have a look at it and he then went into a paroxysm of anger when he discovered that his own diary column in that particular back issue dealt with the Leader trial.
He accused me of deliberately setting him up to read it and denounced the staff in UCD history department. It seems that he strongly suspected that a certain professor of modern history at UCD had had a hand in writing the Leader profile of him which had caused him to take the libel action against the periodical. – Yours, etc,
HUGH McFADDEN,
Harold’s Cross,
Dublin 6W.