DR DAVID Nowlan, former theatre critic, medical correspondent and managing editor of
The Irish Times, has died.
Dr Nowlan studied medicine at Trinity College Dublin and qualified in 1960, later becoming medical registrar at Dr Steevens' Hospital. He was involved in Dublin University Players, and he reviewed theatre regularly for The Irish Timeswhile still a student and while at Dr Steevens' Hospital.
Dr Nowlan spent three years working at a hospital in Jamaica before moving to New York where he practised general medicine at a hospital in Long Island. He and his wife Nora returned to Dublin in February 1969 following his appointment as medical correspondent of The Irish Times.
As a correspondent, he contributed news stories, opinion pieces and feature articles as well as regular medical columns. In his first column, on March 20th, 1969, he set out in elegant style what his readers could expect from him, specifically ruling out a role as a correspondent who would purport to “answer your medical problems”.
Shortly after his appointment, the editor, Douglas Gageby, sent him to report on the war and famine in Biafra. And, in 1974, he joined a group of Irish doctors on a study visit to China, at a time when the country was still very much closed to the West.
According to former Irish Timeseditor Conor Brady, "David Nowlan was one of Douglas Gageby's inspired appointments as he set about professionalising the news team of The Irish Timesin the late 1960s. Nowlan wanted to write about theatre. Gageby wanted a qualified medical correspondent. A deal was struck and the new medical correspondent also understudied as deputy to the late Séamus Kelly who was its theatre critic and doubled as Quidnunc." He combined both roles throughout the 1970s and much of the 1980s, when he was appointed features editor.
In the late 1980s, Brady asked him to take over as managing editor in charge of editorial administration. “He was never at ease with managing budgets or running legal cases, although he often joked that the pomp and deference of the courts reminded him of nothing as much as the consultants’ morning rounds in his medical training days.
" . . . He loved the newspaper life and made many friends in all departments of The Irish Times. Notwithstanding his eclectic range of accomplishments, he was a modest man and thoroughly honourable."
Brady said yesterday that Dr Nowlan “wrote with wonderful clarity, accuracy and honesty. He detested pretension, finding plenty of it in both of his fields of professional interest. Theatre people sometimes bridled at his sharp critiques. But his judgment was invariably vindicated in the long run.”
Dermot O’Shea, former pictures editor, also paid tribute to his colleague. “He was quiet, gentle, a rock of sense, a person everyone went to.”
Apart from the theatre, his other great passion was Ireland’s inland waterways, and especially the Shannon, where he kept a boat.