Sir Robin Chichester-Clark, NI’s last UK government minister, added to prestigious biography list

The latest update of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is published today and adds biographies of 228 men and women who left their mark on the UK, and who died in the year 2016.

Included in the list are the biographies of former UK Minister for Employment Sir Robin Chichester-Clark, poet Sam Gardiner, secretaries of state Jim Prior and Patrick Mayhew, and Bishop of Derry Edward Daly.

Unionist Sir Robin Chichester-Clark, given the title Baron Moyola, was the prime minister of Northern Ireland from 1969 to 1971 and MP for Londonderry from 1955 to 1974.

Sir Patrick Mayhew, Secretary of State, in his office.

At various times he served as a government whip, and as Conservative spokesman on Northern Ireland, and on the arts.

To date he was the last Northern Irish MP to be a UK government minister as minister for employment in 1973/4.

In retirement from politics he worked in business and divided his time between London and Somerset.

Portadown-born Sam Gardiner trained and practised as an architect and spent most of his working life in Birmingham, London, and Grimsby, but it was as a poet that he would be best remembered.

He drew on his Northern Irish background for poems such as the much-anthologised ‘Protestant Windows’ – a satire of sectarian attitudes refracted through a tale of PVC window salesmen.

Two Conservative secretaries of state for Northern Ireland feature in the updated dictionary – Jim Prior, who held the post from 1981 to 1984, and Patrick Mayhew, who was secretary of state from 1992 to 1997.

Baron Prior negotiated an end to the Maze hunger strikes, improved relations with the Irish government, and produced a blueprint for limited devolution.

Patrick Mayhew, given the title Baron Mayhew of Twysden, is recorded as a discreet but key figure in the peace process which led to the Good Friday Agreement.

Bishop of Derry Edward Daly was born in Ballyshannon, Co Donegal, but brought up in Belleek, Co Fermanagh.

On January 30, 1972 he was caught up in the events of Bloody Sunday, and a photograph of him waving a bloodied white handkerchief in front of a group of men carrying the dying teenager Jackie Duddy came to symbolise the events of that day.

Other prominent figures in the new edition include musical icons David Bowie, George Michael, Victoria Wood and Sir Terry Wogan.