The Cork Mother Jones Committee is pleased to announce that Fergal Keane has agreed to speak to the topic “Human Rights in a Divided World”.

He will appear on Sunday evening 31^st July at the Maldron Hotel at 7.30pm.

Born in London to his parents, Maura Hassett was from Cork city and Eamonn Keane from Listowel. Both were actors, who had met in Cork and had been married in Ballyphehane church, Cork City. The family also lived in Dublin for some, before Fergal moved to Cork to live with May Hassett, his grandmother. 

Keane spent much of his youth in Cork, attending St Joseph’s National School on the Mardyke. Later at the Presentation Brothers College nearby, he came under the influence of Brother Jerome Kelly, “a man who would change my life”. In 1972, Brother Kelly, had founded SHARE – Schoolboys Harness Aid for Relief of the Elderly which was set up to assist the elderly in Cork to obtain a home. This charity continues to work in Cork City to this day.

He says of Cork

“More than any other place I have lived, it is Cork I regard as my home.”

He became a reporter with the Limerick Leader and later went to Dublin where he worked in The Irish Press. Moving to RTE he gained experience as a foreign correspondent especially in Africa, before joining the BBC.

In his memoir All of these People published in 2005, Fergal describes, while reporting on the Eritrean war, seeing a badly wounded boy Ande Mikail lying in a tent covered in a foil blanket after being wounded from an Ethiopian MiG fighter…

“That moment on the Eritrean hillside was a point of departure for me. I had seen news photographs of war victims and I’d watched documentaries. But they didn’t smell the way that tent did, and the eyes of the dying on the screenhad never caught me the way Ande Mikail’s had. Having looked into the eyes of this child of war I could not look away again.”

Fergal Keane

Now one of the BBC’s most distinguished foreign correspondents, Fergal is a multi-award winning journalist and author. Having travelled widely, he has reported and borne witness from many of the world’s trouble spots such South Africa, Rwanda, Iraq, the Balkans and Northern Ireland. His descriptions of the horrific conflicts around him are grounded from the perspectives of the ordinary people and children who are suffering and dying in circumstances over which they have no control or say.  The recipient of a BAFTA, he has won the George Orwell prize for literature, as well as being named Amnesty International’s Human Rights reporter of the Year in 1993.

Fergal has made several documentaries such as Forgotten Britain for the BBC and The Story of Ireland (RTE and BBC Northern Ireland)

He is the author of many books including The Bondage of Fear, Road of Bones,and Season of Blood Rwandan Journey, Letter to Daniel and All of These People…a memoir.

Fergal loves to potter by the sea shore at Ardmore in West Waterford.