Sir, – In his article on Samuel Beckett at Portora ( An Irishman's Diary, August 1st), Frank McNally writes that the foundation of the Irish Free State was generally opposed by pupils at Portora Royal School in the early 1920s. This statement needs qualification.
The late Rev Douglas Graham, a near-contemporary of the future Nobel laureate who himself became headmaster of Portora in 1945, wrote a memoir of his schooldays for the Portora magazine in which he recounted how boarders from the Free State organised sporting competitions against Northern Ireland pupils. The two groups marched to these games under their respective banners, the Tricolour and the Union flag. The games ended only after objections were made by some residents of Enniskillen.
Your Diarist is right that Beckett avoided the school after leaving. However, another Old Portoran, the literary critic Vivian Mercier, wrote in his book Beckett/Beckett about the playwright's use of school slang in his works. Beckett always declined to meet Mercier. – Yours, etc,
CDC ARMSTRONG,
Belfast.