Life
1901-1985 [C. S. Andrews; Christopher Stephen Andrews; fam. “Todd”];
b. Summerhill, Dublin, 6 Oct.; called Alonzo Todd as nickname after a
character in the comic Magnet; ed. St Enda’s, Synge St. CBS,
and UCD; joined Dublin Brigade Irish Volunteers, 1917; ten days on hunger
strike on arrest in 1920; Curragh internment in 1921, escaping by tunnelling;
wounded on Irish Republican side in O’Connell St., and later adjutant to
Liam Lynch; interned till 1924; grad. UCD, BComm; Irish Tourist Assoc.;
ESB, Chief Accountant; turf development brief; delegation to Germany and
USSR investigating modern methods; his decision to establish Bord na Móna,
1946, a spectacularly successful national company purveying machined turf
and peat, following a visit to USSR; chairman CIE, 1958; closed numerous
uneconomic lines incl. Great Western rail out of Harcourt Station by executive
decision, selling off part of the track; baffled by recalcitrant transport
unions; part-chairman of Radio Telefís Éireann Authority,
June 1966; issued two volumes of autobiography, Dublin Made Me
(1979), and Man of No Property (1982); d. 11 Oct at home in Dundrum;
famously described himself as ‘slightly constitutional republican’.
DIB MIL
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Works
Dublin Made Me: An Autobiography [Vol. 1] (Dublin: Mercier 1979),
312pp.; Man of No Property: An Autobiography [Vol. 2] (Dublin:
Mercier 1982), 327pp., [9] p. of plates : ill.
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- Brian Inglis, Downstart (London: Chatto & Windus 1990); Frank McDonald, ‘£73m Train Revival Plan Coming Down the Line’, in The Irish Times (3 Aug. 1996), p.6 [infra];
- John Montague, ‘Literary Gentleman’, in Cork Review, ‘Sean O Faoláin Special Issue’, ed. Sean Dunne (1996), [infra];
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)