The scholarly world of Irish film and media is a little less bright this year, with the loss of one of its most important proponents, Martin McLoone.

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………………..vv…Martin McLoone and Ciara Chambers, Shanghai, October 2013.

Martin was not a conventional academic and he held many positions in the “outside” world that influenced his approach to research, teaching and public engagement. After working as a secondary school teacher in London in the 1970s, he returned to Ireland to take up the post of the first Education Officer of the Irish Film Institute. Co-founder of the Foyle film festival, he was also involved in establishing the first Media Association of Ireland and he continued to engage with the creative sector and the general public at every opportunity.

During his time as a Professor at the University of Ulster, he was well known for unforgettable conference papers (with titles like “Why Didn’t Kevin Keegan Play for Ireland?” and “Music Hall Dope and British Propaganda?”) and a writing style imbued with clarity and passion. He also garnered respect for his unshakeable belief in justice and fairness and he was always willing to protect his students and colleagues from exploitation or ill-treatment.

He is responsible for many seminal works in the field of Irish cinema and media including the edited collections Television and Irish Society (with John McMahon, 1984) based on his work with RTÉ, Broadcasting in a Divided Community: 70 Years of the BBC in Northern Ireland (1996) and Culture, Identity and Broadcasting in Ireland: Local Issues, Global Perspectives (1991). He co-edited Irish Films, Global Cinema (with Kevin Rockett, 2007), Big Picture, Small Screen: The Relations between Film and Television (with John Hill, 1996) and Border Crossing: Film in Ireland, Britain and Europe (with John Hill and Paul Hainsworth, 1994). His monographs Irish Film: The Emergence of a Contemporary Cinema (2000) and Film, Media and Popular Culture in Ireland: Cityscapes, Landscapes, Soundscapes (2008) are core reading on all Irish cinema courses across the world.

As well as his strong interest in football as a Tottenham Hotspur supporter, Martin had a passionate love of music. It is a sad coincidence that his death occurred between two of the Irish musicians he had written about so extensively – Sinéad O’Connor and Shane MacGowan – in the book he co-authored with Noel McLaughlin, Rock and Popular Music in Ireland: Before and After U2 (2012). The book had several lively (and musical) launches in Ireland and the UK (with lots of jokes about Martin and Noel going on tour) and inspired a BBC documentary The Irish Rock Story: A Tale of Two Cities (2015).

He also sparked much research in Irish studies more generally, not just through those who read his work and cited it extensively, but most significantly among the many scholars and colleagues he mentored. To be mentored by Martin was to receive an apprenticeship unlike any other. He taught his protégés how to survive and behave with dignity in academia – how to teach with passion, how to stand up to exploitation, how to support fellow colleagues and students, how to present ideas with grace, flair and creativity.

To watch Martin debating was to observe a fine craftsman at work. He made his points with a gentle determination that was always open to new ideas. Seamus Mallon once said of John Hume, “We are going to have different opinions, but never mistake that for a lack of respect” (Walker 2023: 144). This is a philosophy that Martin lived by, always accepting difference and always willing to see things from alternative perspectives. Like Hume, he was a Derry man and a former pupil of St. Columb’s College, a school noted for alumni who have made significant contributions to the Irish cultural sphere. With an endless curiosity and a lack of ego, Martin encouraged new scholars to engage with his work not just by building on it, but by challenging it; he recognised how essential it was to nurture new ideas, particularly on ever-changing notions of Irish culture.

There was no one like Martin. He was a mentor to many, a bright light wherever you encountered him: in the lecture theatre, the conference room, the pub. A storyteller in the best sense, he conveyed complex concepts with ease and humour and he inspired a generation of students to think differently about the world in which we live and the way we behave towards one another. I had the privilege of having Martin as my PhD supervisor and then as a colleague at Ulster University, with an office next door to mine, but it is hard to fully encapsulate how his impact on me transformed the course of my life. He guided me through the difficult terrain of academia, particularly helping me to build resilience in responding to the challenging conference question, or the painful peer review, or the ongoing bureaucratisation of university culture. We travelled to many events and conferences together, most memorably to China in 2013, and on these trips we talked about feminism, socialism, politics, music, history, as well as our lives, friendships and families. I often heard about and came to know the important women in Martin’s life – his wife Cindy, his daughters Katie, Maeve and Grainne, all of whom share his passion for education and show the same warmth and decency that I loved so much in Martin.

His humanity, compassion, humour, humility and integrity are all too rare in academia and his absence is felt acutely by his students, his colleagues, his friends and his family in Portstewart and Derry.

There are five books under review here – all, appropriately, in areas of great interest to Martin McLoone and, indeed, he worked closely with some of these authors and reviewers. Phil Ramsey explores Robert Savage’s book on the BBC’s role in Northern Ireland during Margaret Thatcher’s tenure as Prime Minister, a study based on extensive excavation of original archival sources. Charles Barr reviews Lance Pettit’s exceptional account of the life of Brian Desmond Hurst, an important but often overlooked figure in the landscape of twentieth-century Irish cinema. Nessa Johnston considers the wide-ranging extent of recent Irish popular culture through her review of Anthony McIntyre’s highly engaging Contemporary Irish Popular Culture: Transnationalism, Regionality, and Diaspora. Tadhg Dennehy shows how Des Bell’s Ireland Through a Critical Lens: A Miscellany of Life-Writing on Politics, Culture and Film is far more than a straightforward consideration of the oeuvre of an academic creative practitioner. Dennehy demonstrates the anthology’s value in addressing gaps in scholarly exploration of the Loyalist perspective and experience in both academic writing and on film. Maria O’Brien offers a thorough account of Simon Shire’s much-anticipated Media and Entertainment Law in Ireland, an engaging and comprehensive handbook on entertainment, media and performance law in Ireland, useful to legal practitioners, industry professionals and academics alike.

In sharing recent publications in Irish cinema, media, broadcasting and music, this section of Estudios Irlandeses serves an important function in highlighting these works for interested readers across the globe. Many of the books featured in recent years have developed ideas first proposed in Martin McLoone’s scholarly output in these fields. I hope current and future scholars continue to take inspiration from his pioneering work and that those of us who knew him well will hold ourselves to his philosophy and values in all that we do.