''Social and Personal'' is a long-running column in ''

The Irish Times ''The Irish Times'' is an Irish daily broadsheet newspaper and online digital publication. It launched on 29 March 1859. The editor is Ruadhán Mac Cormaic. It is published every day except Sundays. ''The Irish Times'' is considered a newspaper ...

''. Previously called ''Court and Personal'' it originally published the Court Circulars of the British Royal Family, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and brief

society reporting In journalism, the society page of a newspaper is largely or entirely devoted to the social and cultural events and gossip of the location covered. Other features that frequently appear on the society page are a calendar of charity events and pi ...

details of which members of the

upper class Upper class in modern societies is the social class composed of people who hold the highest social status, usually are the wealthiest members of class society, and wield the greatest political power. According to this view, the upper class is gen ...

were available in their

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of the Wicklow Mountains range. At the 2016 c ...

townhouse A townhouse, townhome, town house, or town home, is a type of terraced housing. A modern townhouse is often one with a small footprint on multiple floors. In a different British usage, the term originally referred to any type of city residence ...

s to receive callers.

''Court and Personal''

Following the

Partition of Ireland The partition of Ireland ( ga, críochdheighilt na hÉireann) was the process by which the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland divided Ireland into two self-governing polities: Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland. ...

in 1921, the column covered the Governor-General of the Irish Free State and Governor of Northern Ireland, with entries placed, as for the Lord Lieutenant, below entries about the Royal Family. The 1937

Constitution of Ireland The Constitution of Ireland ( ga, Bunreacht na hÉireann, ) is the fundamental law of Ireland. It asserts the national sovereignty of the Irish people. The constitution, based on a system of representative democracy, is broadly within the traditi ...

established the office of

President of Ireland The president of Ireland ( ga, Uachtarán na hÉireann) is the head of state of Ireland and the supreme commander of the Irish Defence Forces. The president holds office for seven years, and can be elected for a maximum of two terms.Constitu ...

, whose holder should "take precedence over all other persons in the State". The Fianna Fáil government criticised the column for listing President

Douglas Hyde Douglas Ross Hyde ( ga, Dubhghlas de hÍde; 17 January 1860 – 12 July 1949), known as (), was an Irish academic, linguist, scholar of the Irish language, politician and diplomat who served as the first President of Ireland from June 1938 t ...

's engagements after those of the Royal Family and others, including leading members of the former

Protestant Ascendancy The ''Protestant Ascendancy'', known simply as the ''Ascendancy'', was the political, economic, and social domination of Ireland between the 17th century and the early 20th century by a minority of landowners, Protestant clergy, and members of th ...

— what

Frank Aiken Francis Thomas Aiken (13 February 1898 – 18 May 1983) was an Irish revolutionary and politician. He was chief of staff of the Anti-Treaty IRA at the end of the Irish Civil War. Aiken later served as Tánaiste from 1965 to 1969 and Minister ...

called "every

hyphenated The hyphen is a punctuation mark used to join words and to separate syllables of a single word. The use of hyphens is called hyphenation. ''Son-in-law'' is an example of a hyphenated word. The hyphen is sometimes confused with dashes (figure ...

person in the country". The agreed solution was to place items about the President elsewhere in the paper. In 1942 the government used its wartime censorship powers to remove the column altogether, on the grounds that it compromised the state's neutrality.Murphy 2016 pp.149–150

''Social and Personal''

Following the declaration of the Republic in 1949 the column ceased to mention British royalty and gradually stopped mentioning aristocracy. The name was changed to "Social and Personal". Until around 1978 it published a daily list of who met the President of Ireland in

Áras an Uachtaráin (; "Residence of the President"), formerly the Viceregal Lodge, is the official residence and principal workplace of the President of Ireland. It is located off Chesterfield Avenue in the Phoenix Park in Dublin. The building design was credite ...

. The reasons why it stopped doing this remain unclear; President

Patrick Hillery Patrick John Hillery ( ga, Pádraig J. Ó hIrghile; 2 May 1923 – 12 April 2008) was an Irish Fianna Fáil politician who served as the sixth president of Ireland from December 1976 to December 1990. He also served as vice-president of the Eur ...

suggested that the paper stopped publishing the information it was being supplied, while the paper said it had stopped receiving information from the Áras. Today the column only appears occasionally, to enable prominent families to announce forthcoming

nuptial A wedding is a ceremony where two people are united in marriage. Wedding traditions and customs vary greatly between cultures, ethnic groups, religions, countries, and social classes. Most wedding ceremonies involve an exchange of marriage vo ...

s, and frequently goes for weeks without being included in the paper. Whereas the column once received extensive space every day, it now occupies only one or two inches of space on the "

Letters to the Editor A letter to the editor (LTE) is a letter sent to a publication about an issue of concern to the reader. Usually, such letters are intended for publication. In many publications, letters to the editor may be sent either through conventional mai ...

" page if space allows, and often only contains one entry.

References

Sources

* {{cite book, last=Murphy, first=Brian, title=Forgotten Patriot: Douglas Hyde and the Foundation of the Irish Presidency, year=2016, publisher=Collins Press, isbn=9781848892903, chapter=The Foundations of Presidential Precedence , pages=120–159 The Irish Times Monarchy in Ireland Upper class culture in Europe Social history of Ireland