Tag Archives: Sean O’Driscoll

Rose Dugdale, who spurned a life of privilege to join the IRA, is the subject of a book by writer Sean O’Driscoll A DÉBUTANTE presented to Queen Elizabeth in 1958, young Rose Dugdale had a life of privilege among England’s upper class at her feet, but instead she turned her back on her upbringing, joined the IRA and spent most of the 1970s in prison. Her extraordinary life story has now been told by Ennis journalist Sean O’Driscoll in his second book, Heiress, Rebel, Vigilante, Bomber: The Extraordinary Life of Rose Dugdale. Dugdale co-operated with the book and Sean spoke frequently to her during his research, while he says he was aware of the privileged revolutionary from his youth. “We used to visit cousins in Dublin and we’d pass Portlaoise prison and my mother or father  would say that’s where Eddie Gallagher (the father of Dugdale’s child, whom she married while in prison) is. On the way back down passing …

ENNIS author Sean O’Driscoll has been named on the shortlist for this year’s An Post Irish Book Awards. His book Heiress, Rebel, Vigilante, Bomber has been nominated in the Odgers Berndtson Non-fiction Book of the Year category. His book tells the astonishing story of Rose Dugdale. She grew up in a Chelsea townhouse and on a Devon estate and was presented to the Queen at Buckingham Palace as a debutante in 1958. Rose trained at Oxford as an academic economist and had a love affair with a female professor. At thirty, she commenced giving her inheritance away to the poor and in 1972 she travelled to Ireland and joined the IRA. She went on to become a committed terrorist, participating in a major art heist and a bombing raid on a police and army barracks; who kept a pregnancy secret for nine months in prison and gave birth there; and who ended up at the heart of the IRA’s bomb-making operation …