Madam, - Last Saturday's obituary of Paul Tansey gave a sense of his personality, but not, I think, of his personal warmth and energy. Telephoning him turned inevitably into a very fine tutorial on the questions of the day.
One particular disquisition turned on the former royal family Petrovic-Njegos of Montenegro and the current economic climate in Montenegro and only because our mutual friend Elizabeth Roberts was then writing a book on the subject and I remarked that one of them, Prince Simeon, is buried in Limerick and had lived in Connemara. His quizzing of my empirical commentary on them remains in my memory as typical of his amused questioning of all propositions.
He could understand and explain positions adopted by public figures even where he did not like them or their explication de textes. Our conversations would range over the day's news, the economy, the world economy, politics, who was in or out within the government cadres of the day, sheer gossip about mutual friends and acquaintances, his family and their doings and of course the lights of his life, Olivia and Emily, the cat and his equine interests.
My last telephone call with him shortly before his shockingly untimely death ended up in howls of laughter as I described my day's adventures at a horse show, judging a pony which lashed out at her owner, whose leg (false) fell off in the show ring.
And then our conversation would end after hours of chat with: "I suppose you're looking for herself?"
To paraphrase a great Irish poet, it was my glory to have had such a friend. - Yours, etc,
CIARÁN MacGONIGAL,
Edgeworthstown,
Co Longford.