Philip McDonagh


Philip McDonagh is a poet and former Irish diplomat. His father, Bob McDonagh, and brother, Bobby McDonagh, also served as diplomats.

Early life

McDonagh graduated in Classics from Balliol College, Oxford, where in 1972 he was elected President of the Oxford Union. In a harbinger of his future diplomatic career, during his presidency of the Union, in November 1972, he invited the Irish Prime Minister, Taoiseach Jack Lynch, to debate at the Union. This was in the period after Bloody Sunday when talks were taking place between the Irish and British which eventually culminated in the Sunningdale Agreement. On the day after the debate Lynch had a working dinner with Ted Heath, at 10 Downing Street.
McDonagh's father was at the time head of the Anglo-Irish division at the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs and was among the officials who accompanied Lynch to Britain on that occasion.

Diplomatic career

McDonagh served as Ambassador to India, the Holy See, Finland, Russia and the OSCE.
After retirement from the diplomatic service, he was appointed Senior Fellow at the Edward M. Kennedy Institute, at Maynooth University and, in a parallel appointment, Distinguished Global Fellow at the Center of Theological Inquiry, Princeton University.

Poetry

McDonagh's first poetry collection, Carraroe in Saxony, was published in 2003.
The following year an expanded volume was published in India, Memories of an Ionian Diplomat.
In 2010 The Song the Oriole Sang was published.
McDonagh published an English language translation in 2016 of the verse drama, Gondla, by Nikolai Gumilev. It was staged in several theatres in Ireland that year.
In 2017, he published a stage adaptation of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. It toured in Ireland that year and was also staged in England.