Читать книгу Buck Whaley - David Ryan - Страница 9

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

There used to be a nightclub called ‘Buck Whaley’s’ on Leeson Street in Dublin. I never visited it, but I used to work just around the corner from it and I think that somehow ‘Buck’ himself would have approved of the flamboyant lettering on its sign. The nightclub is no more, but for around thirty years everyone who walked past it or stepped over its threshold must have realised that a character of this name existed – that is, if they didn’t know already. But it wasn’t this late-night venue or its sign that first drew my attention to Thomas Whaley, it was his alleged connection with the Dublin Hellfire Club, which consumed my attention for a while when I was writing my first book. At that time I got in touch with Mervyn Whaley, Thomas’s descendant, who kindly invited me to his home to see the stunning oval portrait of his ancestor, the only individual likeness of him still in existence. Mervyn told me that there was quite a bit of primary source material on Whaley out there if I could get access to it. I realised that there was a book to be written and a story to be told, but I never imagined how extraordinary that story would turn out to be.

Many people have helped and encouraged me in the writing of this book and I’d like to say a special word of thanks to Marie Ryan, Karla Doran, Jimmy Doran, Joan Ryan and Aideen Keane for reading and commenting on drafts of different chapters. I would also like to acknowledge the staff of the different institutions in which I conducted research, in particular the National Library of Ireland, the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin City Library, the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland and the London Library.

I am very grateful to Ömer M. Koç for giving me permission to consult the manuscript journal of Hugh Moore in his collection in Istanbul, Turkey and to Özlem Çakar and Ayhan Kıbıç for arranging for me to visit the library where it is held. Thanks also to Ruth Ferguson for showing me around Thomas Whaley’s family home, Newman House in Dublin, and to Ted Cahill and Sue Chadwick for courteously welcoming me to two other buildings with which he is associated, Fonthill House and Fort Faulkner.

Thanks to Michael Berreby, Frances Coakley, Glenn Dunne and Ruth Ferguson for kindly giving me permission to reproduce a number of the images in the plate sections, and to Jim Butler, Vincent Hoban and Berni Metcalfe for supplying high-res versions of images. Very special thanks are due to Mervyn Whaley for giving me permission to reproduce the oval portrait of Thomas Whaley, which he recently had photographed, and the wax portrait of Richard Chapel Whaley and his family.

I am grateful to Conor Graham for his encouraging response when I first approached him with the idea for this book and for agreeing to publish it, and to Fiona Dunne for preparing it for publication. Sincere thanks also to the following persons for their help and advice: the late Nicola Gordon Bowe, Turtle Bunbury, William Butcher, Zoë Comyns, Patrick Conner, Leigh Crawford, Dorinda Evans, Nichola Goodbody, Karina Holton, James Kelly, Anthony Malcomson, Sami Malki, Jo-Anne Martin, Fonsie Mealy, Averil Milligan, Katie Milligan, Michael Monahan, Michael Ryan, Amanda Stebbings and Christina Tse-Fong-Tai. I am also grateful to my employer Stephen Rooke for allowing me to take a short period of leave to focus on finishing this book.

When you’re immersed in researching and writing history it’s easy to lose track of what life is really about and I’d like to thank our little boy Diarmuid for reminding me of the bigger picture and for being such a source of happiness in our lives. My wife Karla is my biggest supporter and I want to thank her for all her advice and encouragement and for indulging my fixation with Whaley over the past five years. This book is dedicated to her.