Born: May 17, 1953
Died: November 13, 2022
The gifted historian, author and broadcaster, Dr Éamon Phoenix has died following a short illness, aged 69. Renowned for his encyclopedic knowledge of the political and social history of modern Ireland, Phoenix was the head of Lifelong Learning at Stranmillis University College in Belfast. His books include Northern nationalism: Nationalist Politics, Partition and the Catholic Minority in Northern Ireland 1890-1940.
A frequent contributor to the media, Phoenix was recognised as being impartial and fair minded in his interpretation of often contentious events in Northern Ireland. In so doing, he made complex Irish history accessible to all.
He was particularly in demand in this decade of centenaries that encompass the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War and the signing of the Anglo-Irish treaty. He was a member of the Irish government’s expert advisory group on centenary commemorations and also consulted with Stormont on the best way to commemorate the events that resulted in partition.
Phoenix reported on declassified state papers released by the Northern Ireland Public Records Office for a number of outlets including The Irish Times. In 2022, he received the Good Relations award from the non-profit Belfast-based peace and reconciliation body the Community Relations Council for being an “inspirational local peacemaker”.
He also had a long-standing association with The Irish News and since the late 1980s, he researched and edited the popular daily column On This Day. This column was based on reproduced archival news reports stretching back to the early days of The Irish News in 1891 and also its predecessor, The Belfast Morning News, which was founded in 1855.
The Irish New editor Noel Doran said that Phoenix regularly visited the newspaper offices on Donegall St in Belfast, often wearing his blue gloves to examine the bound files that formed the basis of his research. “He was more than a historian. He was a political commentator who had a great range of insights into all aspects of Irish life and culture – North and South. He had such enthusiasm for his work and brought his subject to life,” said Doran. Phoenix’s last On This Day column appeared in The Irish News on November 14th, the day after his death.
As well as a gifted writer, Phoenix was an exceptional orator with an ability to bring history to life through his anecdotes and observations. His vast spoken word archive with the BBC will be a valuable source of research for future historians.
Claire Hanna, the Social Democratic and Labour Party politician for Belfast South, said that Phoenix had his own opinions on the history of Ireland, particularly the North, which he expressed quietly when asked. “These included the futility of the use of violence and the missed opportunities by all sides to show generosity, especially in the early 20th Century,” said Hanna.
Well liked by students at Stranmillis University College for his ability to make history relevant to contemporary life, Phoenix also instilled in his students the skills of debate, analysis and communications. Professor Marie Coleman, professor of 20th-Century Irish History from Queen’s University Belfast (QUB), said that Phoenix believed that history belonged to the people and that it was the job of historians to bring it to public audiences. “Every time I met him at a conference, he had a story about the local history society he had been to the previous evening and the one he was going to the following evening,” said Coleman. He also was a long-standing trustee of the Ulster Historical Foundation (which published his books) as well as other specialist history organisations.
One of four children, Éamon Phoenix grew up in the Cromwell Road area of Belfast where his mother, Margaret (née Napier), ran a boarding house as his father, James, suffered from poor health. As an adult, he often spoke proudly about his mixed ancestry: the Huguenot connections of his father’s family (who came to Ireland with William of Orange) and the fact that both his grandfathers fought in the first World War. His mother’s family came from a Catholic nationalist background in the Short Strand area of east Belfast. Although a practising Catholic, he relished the fact that the family bible was a Church of Ireland Gaelic edition.
Éamon attended St Mary’s Christian Brothers Grammar School in west Belfast and Queen’s University, where he studied history. While studying there, he met his future wife, Alice, a secondary schoolteacher. The couple married in 1980 and lived in various parts of Belfast, latterly in the Malone area of south Belfast. They have one daughter, Mary-Alice. Phoenix later described his wife as “the love of my life, a great companion and my best friend”. He also had a very strong relationship with his daughter and his granddaughter, Nicole. “There was always a little magic when I spent time with Dad,” said Mary-Alice.
Phoenix completed his PhD on Irish nationalism in 1983 and taught history at St Malachy’s College, Belfast. He also worked as a Fellow at the Institute of Irish Studies at QUB before taking up a permanent position at Stranmillis University College.
In a 2014 newspaper interview, he recalled two pieces of advice that he carried throughout his life. The first, from his mother who had lived through the hardship of the postwar depression era, was “education is easily carried”. And the second came from the Derry-born historian, F.S.L. Lyons, who wrote at the outbreak of the Troubles that “to understand the past is to cease to live in it”. “That has always guided me in trying to demythologise history,” said Phoenix.
Éamon Phoenix is survived by his wife, Alice, his daughter, Mary-Alice, his granddaughter, Nicole and his siblings, Irene, Noel and Róisín and son-in-law, Stuart.