TEXT OF THE INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS DELIVERED BY PROFESSOR MARY DALY, Principal, UCD College of Arts and Celtic Studies, University College Dublin on 16 June 2010, on the occasion of the conferring of the Degree of Doctor of Literature, honoris causa on JOHN BOWMAN
John Bowman has been a leading figure in Irish broadcasting for almost fifty years. His professional career spans the entire history of Irish television, and the remarkable transformation in the coverage and commentary of current affairs in Ireland and globally. An authoritative voice on radio and television for countless elections and referendums, he has interviewed every Irish Taoiseach from Sean Lemass to Brian Cowan.
John Bowman is probably best known as the presenter of Questions and Answers; he took on this role as a temporary assignment in 1988 but soon made it his own. When Questions and Answers ended in 2009, it was the second longest running show on RTE. Cathal Goan, director-general of RTE described Questions and Answers as ‘an integral part of the national conversation for many years’, and John Bowman’s voice and moderating role was central to that conversation. He became a regular part of Monday night for many Irish people; conversation next day at work might prove difficult, if you happened to miss the programme. The show frequently broke news stories; it advanced careers for some, and brought abrupt career changes for others. Many political columnists in the print media were extremely grateful to John Bowman and his team for providing them with copy mid-week.Born in Dublin, John was educated at Belvedere College and at Trinity College Dublin, where he graduated with two Bachelor of Arts degrees: in English and Economics, and in History and Politics, which came to dominate his intellectual and working life. His Ph.D. dissertation on De Valera and the Ulster Question, 1917-1973, supervised by TCD Professor Theo Moody, was the first systematic analysis of Eamon de Valera’s attitude towards partition. John Bowman’s analysis was revisionist in the best sense of the word: it refuted much of the simplistic rhetoric regarding de Valera’s attitude towards partition: highlighting what Bowman described as de Valera’s ‘pragmatic, pacific, constructive side’, and noting that de Valera’s primary goal was to curb republican extremism. This research made a significant contribution to the historiography of independent Ireland, at a time when scholarly writing on that period was extremely limited. But his analysis probably had greater significance for contemporary Ireland, because the book derived from the thesis was published in 1982, at the height of the Northern Ireland Troubles; when the Fianna Fail party’s policy towards partition was a very live political issue. It is no surprise his book won the Ewart Biggs Memorial Prize – a prize that recognises works that contribute to the ideals of peace and the strengthening of links between the peoples of Ireland and Britain. In his speech at the presentation of the prize, Seamus Heaney commented that ‘by revealing De Valera as a spirit attempting, however unsuccessfully and tentatively, to awaken from the nightmare of history, he (John Bowman) has offered those loyal to the memory of the long fellow a way of not being hidebound by his politics, and to those antipathetic to his spirit he has offered a chance to rethink their attitudes’. Dr Bowman has made further contributions to North-South understanding through his membership and past presidency of the Irish Association for Economic, Cultural and Social Relations – a non-party and non-sectarian association dedicated to promoting communication, understanding and co-operation between all people of Ireland North and South. The Northern Ireland question undoubtedly occupies a special place in his mind. When Irish Times journalist Kathy Sheridan asked him to identify his most memorable moment on television, he opted for a moment during the coverage of the referendum on the 1998 Belfast Agreement when he told his audience to ‘leave aside who voted north or south: of the people on the island of Ireland, 85 per cent voted for this agreement’. Never before in the history of the people who live in the geographical space we call Ireland had they been in agreement about what should happen next.The popular Sunday morning radio show, Bowman’s Sunday – has given him the opportunity to range well beyond politics. This programme mines the audio archives of RTE to present material that constitutes an audio history of 20th century Ireland. Politics is not ignored: the deaths or significant anniversaries of leading statesmen are marked by programmes that draw on historic interviews and reminiscences of long-dead contemporaries. But his canvas is much wider: ranging through sport, drama, literature, and important social history, such as the recent series of programmes marking the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Dublin’s North Strand. Music and theatre, in all varieties, feature regularly, I suspect that this reflects John’s schoolboy career performing Gilbert and Sullivan.
At the moment John Bowman is working on a series of documentaries and a published volume that will commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Irish television in 2011/12. The book could justifiably be titled ‘Present at the Creation’ – since he has been involved with Irish television almost from its inception, if US statesman Dean Acheson hadn’t already used the title for his memoir. This being Bloomsday let me end on a Joycean note. James Joyce once said that ‘if Dublin were destroyed it could be reconstructed from my book’. If all records of twentieth-century Ireland vanished, but John Bowman’s radio and television programmes survived, future scholars would be in a position to recapture much of the flavour and complexity of twentieth century Ireland.
Praehonorabilis Praeses, totaque Universitas,
Praesento vobis hunc meum filium, quem scio tam moribus quam doctrina habilem et idoneum esse qui admittatur, honoris causa, ad gradum Doctoratus in Litteris; idque tibi fide mea testor ac spondeo, totique Academiae.