Ireland in 50 Albums, No 22: Delia Murphy, The Queen of Connemara 

The late Mayo woman just recorded one album during a fascinating life that also included helping Jews to escape the Nazis 

Delia Murphy, singer. 

The wife of the Irish ambassador to Washington was, in 1961, a powerful representative in her own right of an Ireland cherished in the hearts of the diaspora.

Delia Murphy’s rendition of Irish folk songs and ballads on the only album she ever recorded was “redolent of peat-fire smoke”, musician and song collector Arthur Argo noted in his sleeve notes to The Queen of Connemara. The record, released 10 years before Murphy’s death, was produced across the Atlantic, thousands of miles from Connemara, while she was based in Ontario, and her husband TJ Kiernan served as ambassador during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.