As Queen Elizabeth was about to finish her tour of the high-tech Tyndall Institute in 2011, she was introduced to the Professor Emeritus of Irish History, John A. Murphy, who, in turn, introduced her to the statue of her great-great grandmother, Queen Victoria. It had been erected over the Aula when UCC, then ‘the Queen’s College’, opened in 1849, but was taken down in the nationalistic fervour of the 1930s, and buried in the President’s Garden, to prevent it doing any further harm. John A. had led the campaign to reverse this attempt to bury the past, and as part of the university’s 150th anniversary the statue was put on public display. He told this ‘symbolic story’ to the current queen with characteristic clarity and seeming artlessness, and remarked later that the reception of the Queen in Cork ‘said a lot for our people’s development’. He himself had played a major role in the transformation of public opinion that it represented, through a more inclusive and complex understanding of the Irish past. The fact that he came from a traditional nationalist background and understood it thoroughly was crucial in this. 

His upbringing in Macroom was, as he put it, ‘in the Faith and Fatherland tradition’, but it was also a house of song, ranging widely from sean-nós to Moore’s Melodies, to Victorian music hall and light opera, reflecting the hybridity of Irish culture. He was to transcend his political inheritance, but he retained and celebrated this diverse musical tradition all his life.  

He was a brilliant student, his ‘chief influence intellectually’ being the Professor of Irish History, James Hogan, at the time a leading example of a public intellectual, with a colourful political background, and a high profile in public policy-making and as a Catholic conservative. He kept in touch with his star student after John A. joined the teaching staff at Farrenferris seminary, and persuaded him to do an MA part-time, and ultimately to move to UCC to teach as his assistant. John A.’s years as a secondary school teacher were also formative, laying the foundation for his remarkable success as a dynamic lecturer, and for the conviction that teaching was the primary role of the academic. While his politics were to diverge radically from Hogan’s, he may have owed to his academic mentor the ambition to have a public role.

_{John A. in 2011. (Photo: Tomás Tyner, UCC)}

UCC’s singular honouring of John A. (he had previously been proclaimed ‘University Historian’ for life by the governing body) was, above all, a response to his extraordinary devotion to ‘the College’ and his contribution to its sense of identity and community, in a series of books beginning with the widely admired The College: A History of Queen's/University College Cork 1845–1995 (1995), which was followed by three further books on UCC. He was for many years a very active member of its governing body, and represented UCC on the Senate of the National University. 

While he published some important articles on his early research area of seventeenth-century Ireland, his greatest contribution as a historian was as a communicator of modern historical research to the wider public. He remains best known for his hugely influential Ireland in the Twentieth Century (1975, 1989), but his contributions as a public intellectual were far more extensive, beginning with his deep involvement over many years with the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society and its excellent journal, through various Thomas Davis radio lectures and many other contributions to the media, especially his very popular weekly columns in the Sunday Independent (1984–2003). His election to the Irish senate (1977–83 and 1987–92) gave him a new platform in his campaign to challenge simplistic nationalist orthodoxies, and he is widely acknowledged to have played a courageous and valuable part in the development of the peace process. This came at the cost of public vilification and personal abuse, and indeed threats, at the height of the violence in Northern Ireland, but his courage, the clarity of his thought, and his empathy still with the traditional nationalism of his youth encouraged many to broaden their understanding of Ireland’s complex past and polarised present.  

_{The UCC community gathered in the Aula Maxima, UCC to celebrate John A’s 90th birthday in 2017, where a bronze portrait bust was unveiled in his honour. The bust came from an original plaster model made by his great friend Seamus Murphy, sculptor RHA, in 1973. (Photo: Tomás Tyner, UCC)}

He was much loved across the UCC community for his wit, his outspokenness and wonderful singing voice, and as the great proponent of the historic mission and proper modus operandi of the university as a community of scholars, comprising both staff and students, rather than a business, as government and business pressures dictate increasingly. 

From the medieval song “Gaudeamus igitur”, famous for its articulation of that communal sense, John A. often sang one verse with particular brio, when giving the address at graduation ceremonies: 

It was, perhaps, his greatest contribution to his beloved university, and it pre-occupied him until the end of his life. While we mourn his loss, we also celebrate his remarkable life: ‘Gaudeamus igitur’. Let us therefore rejoice. 

_{John A. Murphy, 1927-2022, requiescat in pace. (Photo: Nancy Hawkes)}