We are indebted to Nuala — she let us peer into the true Ireland

I WAS one of many people who saw a radiant Nuala O’Faolain speaking at the Merriman Summer School in Lisdoonvarna, Co Clare, in August last year. She gave a presentation to a symposium entitled What Were We Like? during which she was joined by novelist Anne Enright.

Appropriately, her close friend Marian Finucane of RTÉ, who did much over the years to facilitate the public articulation of Nuala’s thoughts and ideas, and who presided over her final dialogue with an Irish audience last month, chaired the symposium.

That afternoon, O’Faolain touched on many of the themes that illuminated her career and writings — the status of women, whether things had changed for the better, and her thoughts on the struggle for equality between the sexes.