Grace O’Malley

Ireland’s iconic feminist trailblazer

The endurance and popularity of her biography reflects the sheer magnetism of its subject. Grace O’Malley (Granuaile) continues to enthral, inspire and capture the imagination of new generations of devotees worldwide as she undoubtedly first captured mine.

For many centuries Grace O’Malley was a victim of the mainly male orientation of historical record. While she had more than created her own legend, nonetheless, she never appeared in the pages of my school history books which left me to wonder, no doubt like many more, if she had ever existed. Despite the fact, as I subsequently discovered, her life is well documented in the Elizabethan State Papers and other contemporary collections of her time and her name enshrined in the famous 1599 Boazio map of Ireland (the only female leader ever so listed) it was her absence from Irish historical record that initially motivated my own interest