Henry McDonald: further tributes, fascinating stories and revised funeral details for highly respected journalist

Irish journalist and author Ed Moloney spoke fondly of Henry in his blog ‘The Broken Elbow’.

He wrote: “We had all been expecting Henry McDonald’s death for some time, but even so, the end of life for someone that you liked and have known for many years, and was in the prime of life, still comes as an unwelcome shock.

“He rang me late last year to tell me of the fateful cancer diagnosis, that he had at best just a few months left of life but we continued our conversations as if maybe it would not happen. We often talked of, or rather emailed about soccer, he of his beloved but, like himself, seemingly doomed Everton and me of Spurs, like his team, cursed by poor management and overshadowed by better financed and led local rivals.

“We had other things in common, notably a fascination with the Troubles and in particular the journey undertaken by the Provos, one which saw them ending at a place eerily similar to his and my starting point, a place familiar to anyone who had been persuaded that left-wing, anti-sectarian politics offered the best way forward and that ideas were more powerful weapons than guns could ever be.”

Henry had been at this newspaper for almost exactly a year as political editor, having had a 23-year association with The Guardian and The Observer newspapers.

An obituary penned by The Guardian recalls a death threat made against him in 1999 by the Red Hand Defenders.

He said it was a call that changed his life. Henry told his then wife and young daughter to leave their Belfast home and stay with his parents. When he returned, CCTV cameras were installed and steel bolts fitted to his front door. A klaxon alarm was put in. He said that it accidentally sounded once, when a fuse blew, waking the entire street.

The father-of-three’s funeral will now take place at the The Oh Yeah Music Centre at Gordon Street in Belfast at 11am on Tuesday and not O’Kane’s funeral home as originally planned. He will be interred afterwards in Roselawn Cemetery.

Henry married Claire Breen in 1996 but they later separated. They had three children – Lauren, Ellen and Patrick – who survive him, as does his partner, Charlotte Blease, and his sister, Cathy.