One of the least acknowledged assets of our polity has been the body of senior civil servants who have helped to administer the State since independence. Their commitment, integrity and talent have been remarkable. Their life-long habit of discretion was probably the main reason why so few of them have ever been tempted to publish accounts of their interesting lives and influential careers in various departments of State.

In this memoir Henry Boylan shows how fascinating the life stories of such people can be. Born in Drogheda in 1911, he was educated locally by the Christian Brothers. Both his father and grandfather had been sea captains. He was also similarly inclined. However, the great depression of the 1930s devastated international trade and with it the shipping industry. He had to set out on another sort of voyage which this book records.

In 1930 Boylan joined the civil service and spent the next six years in the Land Commission. Because of his junior status, he found his work in the department uninteresting. In 1936 Boylan was appointed Staff Administration Officer in the ten-year-old Radio Eireann. His recollections of the station indicate how much was achieved at that time by so few.

At the station he met his future wife. (Patricia Boylan has written a charming autobiography of a very different kind, reviewed recently in these pages.)

In 1942, when Radio Eireann was wound down during World War II, Boylan returned to the Department of Lands. Five years later he was promoted to the Gaeltacht Services Division as assistant director and in 1952 became its director. His remit was to develop and maintain local industries such as seaweed, knitwear, embroidery and toys in the Gaeltacht areas of Galway, Donegal and Mayo. It was something of a challenge. For most people Gaeltacht industries were seen as a "sop" or cheap political gesture to the inhabitants of the western seaboard. To the industries already established, Boylan added Arrramara Teo (Sea Products Ltd), which proved to be a very successful seaweed processing enterprise. By 1958, to ensure commercial flexibility, these industries were combined to form Gaeltarra Eireann, a state-sponsored company. Almost at once Boylan and his board were caught up in a campaign by others to prove that the company was riddled with incompetence and corruption. The allegations of wrongdoing proved to be groundless and due partly to party-political wrangling but the incident left Boylan embittered. Boylan transferred to the Department of the Gaeltacht. Two years later he was back in the Land Commission where he eventually became assistant secretary. In his final years in the Civil Service he was involved in the implementing of the States new environment policies.

In this memoir the author recalls other facets of his life, among them his passion for rowing and sailing, and his involvement as an enthusiastic gaelgoir in various Irish language organizations. After taking early retirement in 1972 he embarked on a new career as a writer. His most important publication was the well-received Dictionary of Irish Biography (1978). He wrote other books, too, such as Valley of the Kings, a fascinating account of the Boyne Valley.

Apart from his varied civil service career, Boylans life was most interesting, as is his memoir, touching as it does on so many aspects of the development of modern Ireland.

Fr. J. A. Gaughan is an historian

Uncannily, however varied their ways of life, Boylan and Gaughan start their personal records on the same groove; their first three words are identical: "I was born". This may seem a fairly essential opener for any autobiography, so much so that lesser men of letters might consider it rather self-evident and hence redundant. The phrase testifies that circumlocution and artfulness certainly do not inform these unadorned autobiographies.

Why should they? Both men stand tall in their contribution to contemporary Ireland-Boylan as a prominent civil servant, Gaughan as a distinguished cleric. Both are culchies, Boylan from Drogheda, Gaughan from Listowel, but a latter-day Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom would bump into them several times during their peregrinations, from Sandycove, where at Blazes forty-foot Harry Boylan would be bathing, to that "disappointed bridge" in Dun Laoghaire, where the same real Boylan, yacht-capped, would be sailing or visiting the Royal Irish Yacht Club; Father Gaughan would be spotted in, or near his University Church, 87 Stephens Green.

However varied the two mens ambits, their orbits would have coincided at the National Library in Kildare Street. Stephen might have seen the one working with lively aplomb on his seminal "graveyard", A Dictionary of Irish Biography (the 1,700 entries of which Boylan wrote rather than edited), the other on his four-volume biography of Alfred ORahilly.

Neither would have arrested Stephen with the sophistication of the dramatis personae in Joyces Scylla and Charybdis: both Boylan and Gaughan are too honest for pretence, and this makes their recollections such refreshing, and captivating, reading.

Modesty pervades Boylans autobiography. That necessary "I" on which the book starts swiftly disappears and is replaced by portraits of his family and friends which are informed by admiration. His interest in others emanates from an adventurous spirit. Indeed, the first chapters read like a rollicking maritime adventure story, from "the days of wooden ships and iron men" and his father's sailing a tea-clipper to his brother Willy surviving the explosion of a sea mine in the Mersey river and the torpedoing of a vessel in convoy during the Second World War.

The book and Boylan's 91 years are pervaded by youthful vigour. "It was certainly worthwhile visiting San Francisco," we read in the last chapter, "the steep streets, Chinese quarter with its doss-houses and alleged opium dens." Hardly Civil Service fare! Nor is his description of how he met his wife, Patricia. One day in 1940, he heard a woman reading FR Higginss suggestive and elemental The Three-Cornered Field. Within months, they were engaged.

While Boylan lauds the achievements of others as Herculean, he makes his own sound so easy, be it his managerial role in the fledgling Radio Eireann, his directorship of Gaeltacht Services, or his writerly exploits. One of the scarce patches of quiet desperation he lets us glimpse is his having to cope with TD Patrick Lindsays personal vendetta against the tweed and seaweed industries of Gaeltarra Eireann, and the suicide of its manager.

J Anthony Gaughans recollections record the considerable enjoyment that writing has given him, and that he wishes to share with others. Thus, more than an autobiography, this book is intended as a guide-describing his own experiences with all the stages of writing from a books inception to its launch.

That Gaughans research is painstaking is common knowledge, and his punctiliousness shows in his description of people and places. Gaughans sense of balance is ever present-he divides people in two categories, "those who buy books and do not read them and those who read books and do not buy them."

To this sense of balance Gaughan adds unparalleled candour. The mixture makes this book pure dynamite. Gaughan shares one of the qualities he singles out in his friend John B Keane, "his lack of equivocation". Even in his portrait of John B there are some warts (he "tended to harbour resentment against journalists and critics" and his "complaints of shabby treatment from the Abbey Theatre were intemperate").

Gaughan is a brave man with a great sense of justice: he shows how in small-town politics lesser gods make their own importance (the rift in the Listowel Drama Group in 1959 was mainly caused by a "decision-to put on a new play by Bryan MacMahon rather than a John B Keane play"). MacMahons "complexities" are laid bare. Ulick OConnor is seen as a "study in irritability", Tod Andrews "devoid of charm", Madame Veronica Fitzgerald (mother of the Knight of Glin) as "a person of generous proportion. I was reminded of Winston Churchill."

Gaughan pierces myths and is delightfully iconoclastic. Many statues are toppled, including James Larkin who is unmasked as a bad loser, publicly abusing the labour leader Tom Johnson. His book is a remarkable exercise in honesty.

For Mayo readers one of the fascinations of A VOYAGE ROUND MY LIFE will be Henry Boylans account of his career in Gaeltarra Eireann which included a sensational clash with Minister Paddy Lindsay in 1957.

On his last day in office before Fianna Fail took over the author, then the company director, recalls that he was summonsed into the Ministers office and handed a letter directing him to dismiss one Patrick Dooley, an Irish sales agent on the grounds he had given excess discounts on knitwear to shopkeepers.

Boylan pointed out that Dooley had no authority to give discounts and the accounts system would not pass them but 'Lindsay brushed that aside, sat back in his chair, gave me a hard look and said:

"If there is any attempt to re-appoint Dooley, I will have amotion passed by Dail Eireann for an enquiry into the management of Gaeltarra Eireann. You, Mr. Boylan, will go into that enquiry with an unblemished reputation but mud will be thrown and some of it will stick to you."'

After that, a few weeks later Jack Lynch, Minister for the Gaeltacht in the new Fianna Fail government, reinstated Dooley on the grounds he could find no grounds for Lindsays decision. The former Minister challenged this action and put down a series of questions about Dooley s earnings and his business interests other than his Gaeltarra agency which drew from Charlie Haughey the exclamation: "When will this personal vendetta come to an end?" In February 1958 Paddy Lindsay put down his threatened motion for the appointment of a Select Committee to enquire into the conduct and management of Gaeltarra Eireann. In the course of the debate Mayo solicitor Michael Moran referred to a row at Christmas 1956 between Lindsay and Dooley in the Railway Hotel,Galway and said the dismissal of Dooley was a personal spleen.

Because of further charges by Lindsay on fraudulent practices, all Gaeltarra records were immediately impounded on Minister Morans instructions and a Garda investigation set up by the Minister for Justice. That enquiry lasted nine months and resulted in a government decision to prosecute a leading Dublin wool merchant and a major supplier to Gaeltarra.

The case came to court but on the second day Boylan was shattered to be told Kenneth Fricker, a fellow Gaeltarra director, upset and depressed by the continuing Garda investigation, had committed suicide by drowning himself in a dye vat.

In June 1959 Lindsays motion was resumed in the Dail when Michael Moran announced that after investigation of the evidence in respect of Lindsays charges, the court case had been dropped. He went on. to say that due to Lindsays unfounded allegations a reputable firm was slandered and involved in costs of £7,000, an unfortunate man lost his life up in Donegal, leaving a widow and family, irreparable damage was done to Gaeltarra Eireann and a cloud left over conscientious civil servants.

Lindsays motion was then put to the house and with nobody speaking in favour of it but himself, it was ignominiously defeated. That slice of the Drogheda 1911 born careerist should whet Mayo appetites for the details of a career which included a spell as administration officer in the old Radio Eireann Henry Street studios famous for its long corridor-and for the incident when a bored soldier on guard duty to protect the equipment from an IRA takeover during the war years, fired a shot the length of this aisle. He was replaced by a Garda Sergeant!

The book deals with the author s involvement with the seaweed industry and various clashes with the tight-fisted Department of Finance memorably described as "an inverted Micawber, waiting for something to turn down"!

Things haven t changed that much in the interval!

Author of A Dictionary of Irish Biography amongst other books, Boylan (b. 1911) came from a Drogheda seafaring family-there is an account by his brother, Capt. W. R. Boylan, of the loss of the SS Yorklown sunk by German U-boats in 1942. Boylan was a student at Trinity College and thence the Civil Service, Radio Eireann and as Director of Gaeltacht Services, was a mover and shaker in both the seaweed and tweed industries while enjoying the local wildlife and game birds. Thirteen pages of photos enhance the text that is peppered with notable names and acquaintances from the life and times of a mighty nonagenarian.

Now 90 years young, Harry Boylan seems to have done almost everything in his lifetime, and done it enviably well. His father was a sea-captain-which partly explains the title-and the Boylan home was in Drogheda, a thriving port. Young Harry was a brilliant oarsman at Trinity and also won a medal in the Tailteann Games of 1932. Later chapters evoke the unique atmosphere of Radio Eireann in its old Henry Street days, with Roibeard O Farachain, Austin Clarke, Eithne Dunne and many more; but Boylan was also a key civil servant who played an active role in Gaeltacht affairs and in other economic or administrative areas. More recently, he has put journalists and researchers of all kinds in his debt by compiling an excellent Dictionary of Irish Biography. A pity, however, that the book is a mere 167 pages long, including the index-there is surely enough good material and relevant period interest in it to justify a volume of twice that length.

Higher civil servants have for the most part traditionally kept a low profile. This is perhaps less true in Ireland than elsewhere, because we are a small country. But another aspect of the tradition bequeathed to us by Britain, their probity, has fortunately survived very well. Henry Boylan is probably best known to readers for his invaluable Dictionary of Irish Biography, first published in 1978 and now in its third edition. He was born in Drogheda and most of his family were connected with the sea. His father and grandfather were master mariners and captains in the Drogheda to Liverpool service. Two of his elder brothers went to sea, and Henry might well have done the same but for the Great Depression of the 1930s. Instead, he joined the Drogheda Rowing Club and excelled in it. Like many another bright lad he went into the civil service in which, predictably as it now appears, he soon distinguished himself.

Sea-fishing, swimming and competitive rowing on the Boyne and the Liffey absorbed some of his energy, but there was plenty to spare. He has clearly always been someone who enjoys working. After a not very stimulating stint in the Land Commission he applied for a transfer to Radio Eireann, then in its infancy. But that was interrupted by the Emergency. He married Patricia Clancy in 1941. Back in the civil service proper (Supplies and Lands), he soon found himself taking particular care of the Gaeltacht areas, notably with regard to textile industries and processing of seaweed, where the support of T. K. Whitaker was crucial. Like another notable achiever, Al Byrne, he managed to work his way through Trinity while holding down a full-time job, and got a first-class degree. An attack of diphtheria was resolutely repelled. Telefis Eireann was founded, and modern Ireland began to invent itself.

Boylans enthusiasm for the language found expression on the editorial board of Comhar, and he was able to do a lot for the economic betterment of the West in Arramarra, a semi-state body set up to exploit alginates, and in Gaeltarra Eireann. He seems to have got on well with nearly everybody except the American directors who were wished on him when there was a takeover.

His various jobs brought plenty of travel which he clearly enjoyed as he enjoys most things. Retirement, for him as for other such people, brought merely an increase in profitable activity.

Embedded in the book are two sharply contrasted short stories on the theme of work: one to encourage the diffident, the other to put down the pretentious. And there are some good anecdotes, some of them, such as that of the sailor who put an oar on his shoulder and walked inland till someone asked him what it was, very, very old, but none the worse for that. The same goes for the crack about the Department of Finance being inverted Micawbers.

Harry Boylan, as everybody calls him, is a fully rounded character who knows exactly how far to go and when to stop. This is not a long book-only 160 pages-and the reader is sorry when it comes to an end. Which is just how it should be.

It was a great pleasure for me to be asked to launch this latest book of Harry Boylans, his account of a more varied and interesting life than public servants are popularly supposed to enjoy. Apart from being both public servants, indeed, being together for a time in the Department of Finance, Harry and I have much else in common. We both grew up in Drogheda. We went to the Christian Brothers School, where we were fortunate to have excellent teachers, a Brother Burke, who taught English superbly, and a layman, Peadar McCann, an inspiring teacher of Irish and History, so devoted to his pupils as to come in half an hour before school time, for no reward, to teach a group of us French. Harry was my senior by a few years and was held up to my class as a model student. Nevertheless, we didn't hate him--he already had that disarming charm of manner!

These memoirs also evoke for me the cricket played in summer beside the Boyne, the treat of watching Harrys father, Captain Boylan, skilfully turn his ship, the Mellifont, in the narrow river, the thrill of following the regatta on a bicycle. Harrys own distinctions in rowing are modestly recorded. For a man who has written a biography of Wolfe Tone, launched a dictionary of biographies of other notable Irish personalities, and commemorated the Boyne river, it is timely that he should tell us about himself. His choice of the word voyage in the title and his devotion to sailing-white sails crowding-reveal him as a master mariner manque. Unlike so many of his forebears and family, he may not have gone to sea but the salt tang is in his blood and in his writing. It seems perfectly appropriate that much of his official life was spent in seaweed as Chairman of Arramara, Teoranta! In an unusually varied career, not without some vexatious tribulations, he was a pioneer in wild life conservation and in the promotion of Donegal tweed and other Gaeltacht industries.

The book includes a gripping account of his eldest brother, Willys, life and wartime adventures at sea, particularly in command of a large convoy ship which was torpedoed and sank with great loss of life.

While an officer in the Land Commission, Harry found himself in a remarkable cradle of literary talent, resembling in this respect the town of Listowel. He mentions the playwright, Rutherford Mayne, the pen-name of Sam Waddell. One could add Tom Kinsella--for a time my private secretary- and, of course, Hugh Leonard. The interludes included in this book are a delight, showing Harrys sense of humour as well as his playful imagination. Throughout the book, indeed, the image is of a kind of Renaissance man, a man of wide interests, of magnanimity and deep humanity. Adapting the words of a well-known psalm, it could be said of him: surely goodness and kindness have followed him all the days of his life.

May there be many more such days and may these memoirs have the wide readership they deserve.