The Henry Mount Charles story has everything: rock’n’roll, a burning castle and even an apparently ersatz landed title. The “Lord” part of “Lord Henry” is just a fiction cooked up by the media, according to his second wife, Iona, who says that his proper title is “Earl of Mount Charles” and that the “Lord Henry” label is a “complete spoof”.
But then much that we think we know about the custodian of Slane Castle and the driving force behind the concerts at the Co Meath estate is conjured from thin air, as becomes clear in the absorbing Henry Mount Charles: A Lord in Slane (RTÉ One, Friday, 6.30pm). One point made early on is that the caricature of Mount Charles as Ireland’s top toff is largely fantasy, no matter that his blood is assuredly blue. (His family, the Conynghams, settled in Ireland from Scotland in the 17th century; they largely reconstructed Slane in 1785.)
“People thought I was a lord living in a castle – in reality I was Harvard graduate who worked in book publishing in London,” the 73-year-old says about the years before his father’s death, after which he returned to take the reigns at Slane. He also points out that Anglo-Irish is a valid type of Irishness. “I’ve always felt that Ireland is a sea fed by many streams,” he says. “I just happen to belong to one stream, which is the Anglo-Irish tradition. I have every right to call myself an Irishman as the person next door.”
Mount Charles, who was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2014 and is a recovering alcoholic, cuts a frail figure. But he looks back on his life with a twinkle and tries to be upbeat even about the dark times – such as poachers’ killing, in 1989, of Timothy Kidman, his gamekeeper, and the fire two years later that almost destroyed the castle.
TV in 2025: 25 of the best new and returning shows to watch out for in the 12 months ahead
Henry Mount Charles: A Lord in Slane – The strange blend of fact and fiction around one of the last Anglo-Irish eccentrics
Squid Game season two review: Tense, bloody follow-up ticks boxes if you’re craving more Red Light, Green Light
Mrs Brown’s Boys Christmas Special review: Unkillable comedy’s wit is as sharp as a mouthful of Brussels sprouts
But this is, above all, a story of the life-changing magic of rock’n’roll. In the 1980s Slane became a sort of unofficial spiritual heartland of Irish live music when it hosted era-defining concerts by Bruce Springsteen, Queen and David Bowie. Peter Aiken of Aiken Promotions looks back on these events fondly, recalling Springsteen’s 1985 concert as taking place on a “beautiful day in June”.
“He was a lovely person – it was a phenomenal show,” Mount Charles says of Springsteen. He is just as effusive about Queen’s gig the following year – one of the last huge open-air concerts that Freddie Mercury would play with the band, as Brian May, Queen’s guitarist, tells RTÉ. “It was an insane event,” he says. “Noisy, completely unbridled.”
Disaster struck five years later as fire ripped through the castle. Mount Charles was already a keen drinker, but the stress of having to finance Slane’s reconstruction seemed to drive him over the edge and into a downward spiral.
In the end it was Adam Clayton of U2 who extended a hand. The band had recorded The Unforgettable Fire, perhaps their best album, at Slane in the summer of 1984. Then, as Mount Charles wryly remarks, another “unforgettable fire” would devastate the castle. So it was apt that it would be a member of U2 who helped him get back on the straight and narrow.
“As problem drinkers we always minimise the scrapes we get into until that one scrape that is a rock bottom,” Clayton says, perched cheerfully alongside Mount Charles on a couch. “Enough is enough: he went off and got the help that he needed. He’s done so well he started a whiskey company.”
That would be Slane Irish Whiskey, which Mount Charles runs with his son Alex Conyngham and which he sees as the future of the Slane brand. “I have had to think about my own mortality,” he says. “Part of who I am and what I’ve done is keeping this estate together.”
He says this wistfully but with pride – a poignant moment in an engaging portrayal of one of the last of the Anglo-Irish eccentrics and a man who, amid his many ups and downs, has made an indelible contribution to live music in Ireland.
