Ireland's Greatest

**Crosby87** · 27/09/2010, 3:46 PM

Shane McGowan is the greatest ever. Pogues are by far the best and most important Irish Band of all time.

Sam Beckett can't be included i guess b/c he didn't like Ireland too much.

**Spudulika** · 27/09/2010, 5:07 PM

Originally Posted by Crosby87

Shane McGowan is the greatest ever. Pogues are by far the best and most important Irish Band of all time.

Sam Beckett can't be included i guess b/c he didn't like Ireland too much.

Last I heard Shane is English, I think the same as the Pogues, then again Connolly and Larkin being mentioned throws it into the mix.

Beckett was a great but Shaw would have a deeper body of work, as for Oscar Wilde....

**Billsthoughts** · 27/09/2010, 9:25 PM

shane macgowan is from tipperary. I know they are behind the times down ther but dont think they are still under british rule.

**Crosby87** · 27/09/2010, 10:52 PM

Shane spent time growing up over there but he is most assuredly Irish. I hope that person was being sarcastic? Sacriledge.

**Dodge** · 27/09/2010, 11:04 PM

Originally Posted by Eminence Grise

But I�d probably give my vote to Sean Lester, one-time Director of Publicity of the Free State, then League of Nations High Commissioner to Danzig, where he won worldwide respect for standing up to the Nazis, even though his own safety was under threat. He ended his career as the last Secretary General of the League during WW2, and helped pave the way for the UN.

He didn't win worldwide respect at the time. In fact he was a lone voice for sometime. He recently had a room dedicated to him in Gdansk's town council

Anyway its a TV show. They were always going to go populist. best we can hope for is that some watching will think "there has to have been someone better than bono" and then doa bit of research

**Spudulika** · 28/09/2010, 5:14 AM

Guys, Shane is English, build and bridge and all that. It doesn't make his talent or presence any less important, nor the fact that he is of Irish extraction.

In the overall list I'd have ensured Admiral Brown or General Lacy got a mention, or Lavelle Nugent, they were massive figures in their day and contributed hugely to world history, but the further back we go the less important in the modern age figures seem to become.

**Macy** · 28/09/2010, 7:45 AM

Are we back to this nonsense that you have to be born here to be Irish? Interesting that you totally missed excluding Connolly for being born in Scotland (and Larkin was also mention earlier - born in England).

**pineapple stu** · 28/09/2010, 8:58 AM

Should we swap Paul McGrath for the Duke of Wellington on the list, yeah?

**Eminence Grise** · 28/09/2010, 10:34 AM

Originally Posted by Dodge

He didn't win worldwide respect at the time. In fact he was a lone voice for sometime. He recently had a room dedicated to him in Gdansk's town council

Some contemporary newspaper accounts of his appointment to the Danzig position:

Dublin Evening Mail October 1933: “All the newspapers agree that the High Commissionership of Danzig is a post that demands tack, courage and diplomacy of no mean order. Those who know Sean Lester best are well aware that he possesses these qualities in abundant measure. Few Irishmen of our time have had a better claim to high preferment. His intellectual qualities, and, hardly less, his temperament and character make him eminently fit to govern the Free City of Danzig.”

Irish Independent 10 Nov 1933: “As everybody who has been to Geneva knows, Mr Lester is one of the most popular of the younger diplomats, and enjoys a reputation for shrewdness and sound judgment second to none.”

Irish (?) Independent, 16 January 1934: “In all his work [as Irish delegate to the League of Nations], it was stated, he had shown remarkable tact, shrewdness of judgment, persuasiveness and, when necessary, firmness.”

These are all taken from the Lester Mss in UCD Archives (P203/105). There are a lot more newspaper clippings there in another file, including many which lauded Lester for his work, and deplored the Nazi aggression he faced down.

Five decades of communism might explain why it took so long to commemorate him in Poland, but that’s just my surmising.

**Dodge** · 28/09/2010, 11:00 AM

Press reports in Ireland do not equate to Worldwide acclaim.

I'm not arguing that with you over the hugely important role he played. I'm jsut pointing out that then, as now, he was criminally undervalued. I recommend this book to anyone interested http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sean-Lester-.../dp/0716529688