Rita Childers dies peacefully aged 95

RITA CHILDERS, the wife of former president Erskine Childers, who herself came close to being Ireland’s first female president, has died peacefully at the age of 95.

Born Margaret Dudley, she met her husband, then a Fianna Fáil politician, through her work in the British Embassy.

The Archbishop of Dublin at the time, John Charles McQuaid, tried to prevent their marriage because she was a Roman Catholic and he an Anglican but they eventually went to Paris where they married in 1952.