Mary Kenny (born 1944, Dublin, Ireland) is an Irish author, broadcaster, playwright and journalist. She was a founder member of the Irish Women's Liberation Movement, though she has since rejected her radical past^[1].

In March 1971 she walked out of Haddington Road church after the Archbishop of Dublin's pastoral was read out from the pulpit, confirming that "any contraceptive act is always wrong", saying "this is Church dictatorship".^[2] In a follow-up letter to the Irish Times she explained her actions by saying Ian Paisley was right: "Home Rule is Rome Rule".^[3]

In 1971 she travelled with Nell McCafferty, June Levine and other feminists on the so-called "Contraceptive Train" from Dublin to Belfast to buy condoms, then illegal in Ireland. ^[4][5]

Later that year she went to live in England for good.

Mary Kenny has written for many UK and Irish broadsheet newspapers, including The Irish Independent, The Times, Guardian, Daily Telegraph and The Spectator and has authored books on William Joyce and Catholicism in Ireland. She is known in the UK as a Roman Catholic journalist.

She is married to the journalist and writer Richard West, and is the mother of the journalists Patrick West and Ed West.

She is author of the play Allegiance, in which Mel Smith played Winston Churchill at the Edinburgh Festival in 2006.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Mary Kenny's home page

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