Life
1935-1978; b. Surrey; TCD lecturer in political economy; idolised Pearse; author of Isaac Butt and Home Rule (1964); also,
wrote historical introduction to Basil Chubb, Government of Ireland;
articles and short stories. FDA
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Criticism
R. F. Foster, ‘Varieties of Irishness’ [inaugural lecture], in Maurna Crozier, ed., Cultural Traditions in Northern Ireland [Proceedings of the Cultural Traditions Group Conference (Belfast: IIS 1989), pp.5-24: offers criticism of Thornley’s conception that Butt was converted to Home Rule by his experience in defending the Fenians in 1867, ; p.10 [see under Isaac Butt, supra].
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Notes
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field
Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 3, remarks and quotes: ‘As David Thornley wrote
in the optimistic atmosphere of the 1960s, “It seems certain that
our island will become affected increasingly by the spread of European
social and philosophical ideas, strongly tinged with Catholicism [...]
and that our social habits and our politics will take on the flavour that
is ever more urban and, as a consequence, ever more cosmopolitan. And
this in turn will sound the death-knell of the attempt to preserve any
kind of indigenous Gaelic folk culture in these islands”.’ (From
Ireland, The End of an Era?, Tuairum Pamphlet No. 12, 1965, p.12;
cited in Terence Brown, A Social and Cultural History, 1922-79 [1980],
p.243).
Belfast Public Library holds Isaac Butt and Home Rule (1964).
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)