Clodagh Finn: An unflinching study of a warts-and-all ‘hero’

Lin Rose Clark teases out the political and historical and writes the women back into the story

Killarney-born journalist, Olympian and fallen soldier Robert Hilliard, with his son, Tim. Pictures: Courtesy of Lin Rose Clark

“I’ve been singing Bob Hilliard’s name for 40 years, and now we finally have his story,” Christy Moore writes on the back of a new biography of a man who packed several lifetimes into one.

Robert Hilliard was — and this is not an exhaustive list — a member of the prosperous Hilliard family in Killarney, a Protestant, a fierce republican, a skilled debater, an Olympian boxer, a journalist, a Church of Ireland priest, and a courageous member of the International Brigades who died fighting Franco when he was just 32.