Mary McAleese was unopposed last October and is now eight months into her second seven year term as President of Ireland. Her message about the prospects for Ireland is unrelentingly optimistic. “We can achieve 95 per cent of what we want by being nice to one another and 100 per cent of nothing by being nasty.” During her first term she entertained more than 140,000 people in her official residence, and is on her way to that number again. She says: “We have a vibrant, first-world country, but we have a humbling third-world memory.” When she left Trinity College she became a journalist and TV presenter, thus her easy command of a television interview and a telling soundbite. The mother of three children, she still finds time for hill walking and set dancing. Mary McAleese is 54 today.
RGT
Beth Chatto, horticulturist, 82; the Marquess of Cholmondeley, 45; Alan Coren, writer and broadcaster, 67; Brenda Cowderoy, general secretary of the Girls’ Friendly Society, 1978-85, 80; Professor Sir Michael Dummett, Wykeham Professor Emeritus of Logic, Oxford University, 80; R.I.L. Guthrie, Director of Social and Economic Affairs, Council of Europe, 1992-98, 68; Vice-Admiral Sir Roy Halliday, Director-General of Intelligence at the MoD, 1981-84, 82; Rupert Hambro, chairman of Rupert Hambro and Partners, 62; Lord Hope of Craighead, a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, 67; Bruce Johnston, singer, 61; Robert King, conductor and harpsichordist, 45; Lord Lang of Monkton, Secretary of State for Scotland, 1990-95, 65; Sir Douglas Osmond, Chief Constable of Hampshire, 1962-77, 91; Duncan Robinson, director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 62; Professor Thurstan Shaw, archaeologist, 91; Catherine Walker, French couturier, 60; the Very Rev A.C. Warren, Provost Emeritus of Leicester, 73; Hugh Wood, composer, 73.