Helen Lucy Burke

Notes

Life
?- ; b. Galway; journalist;rominent in Equal Pay and Women’s Rights movements author of Close Connections (1979), treating of sex and religous hypocrisy in modern Ireland; A Season for Mothers (Swords 1980), concerning recent widowhood; Burke writes food reviews for Sunday Tribune; and member of Irish Food Writers’ Guild; object of an libel suit brought by Senator Norris for defamation in 2016 concerning an RTE broadcast of 2011 [see note].

Fiction
  • Close Connections (Dublin: Poolbeg Press 1979), 247pp.
  • A Season for Mothers and Other Occasions (Dublin: Poolbeg Press 1980), 160pp. [stories].
Miscellaneous
  • “The three-toed Sloth”, in The Seven Deadly Sins: A New Collection of Fiction, ed. Elizabeth Troop (Severn Press 1985) contribs. incl. William Trevor, Rose Tremain, Troop, et al.; 222pp.; Burke’s story is the last of seven.]
  • ‘A season for mother’, Stories by Contemporary Irish Women, ed. Daniel J. Casey (Syracuse UP 1990)[See under Antologies - as attached.
 

Bibliographical notes
Stories by contemporary Irish women, ed. Daniel J. Casey (Syracuse UP 1990), CONTENTS: Helen Lucy Burke, A season for mothers; Ita Daly, Aimez-vous Colette?; Mary Beckett, Saints and scholars; F. D. Sheridan, The empty ceiling; Clare Boylan, Housekeeper's cut; Anne Devlin, Five notes after a visit; Mary Lavin, Lilacs; Maura Treacy, A minor incident; Rita Kelly, The cobweb curtain; Julia O’Faolain, A pot of soothing herbs; Kate Cruise O’Brien, Losing; Maeve Kelly, The sentimentalist; Lucile Redmond, The shaking trees; Una Woods, The quibbler; Emma Cooke, Winter break; Fiona Barr, Edna O’Brien, A scandalous woman.

Notes
David Norris(Dáil Senator for TCD): Burke was sued along with RTE for defamation by Senator David Norris arising from RTE Liveline broadcast in 2016 purportedly implying that Norris favoured incest and under-age sex. The substance of the 2011 broadcast transmitted during his Presidential unsuccessful campaign in that year related to an interview of 8 mins duration conducted over dinner in Jan. 2002 and recorded by Ms. Burke as an interview-article for Magill. The High Court refused to compel RTE to share documents with Dr. Norris and had previously refused the same to Ms. relating to his defence of his Israeli boyfriend Ezra Yizhak Nari who was convicted of statutory rape of a teen-are boy in 1997 as well as his support for Cathal Ó Searchaigh following a documentary about his involvement with boys in the Far East (“Fairytale of Kathmandu”). On that occasion Justice Marie Baker refuse the journalist’s application, noting that the Dr. Norris but he did assert in the earlier interview that an arbitrary age for staturary rape was not the only criterion to be consulted where consent was involved. [Paraphrase; see Irish Times reports, & 13 Oct. 2016 [online] & 28 Feb. 2014 [online].)

Note that the full recording is included in a review of the affair at The Journal.ie (Oct 2011) occasioned by Burke‘s sending a CD of the 2002 interview to Joe Duffy at RTE (The Journal.ie, 21 Oct. 2011- online). In it Dr. Norris draws a distinction between pederasty and paedophilia and expressed expresses pleasure at the idea of having been “under the wing” of a practitioner of “classic paedophilia as practices by the Greeks” but feeling not sexual attraction towards children himself and castigates the hysteria of the British tabloid press around the subject. Duffy's broadcast and the Journal article post-dated the poll whcih showed Norris trailing in the Presidential election - though elsewhere in the Journal he is reported to have felt satisfaction at his role in breaking up the pattern of exclusive party-nomination. Norris is a prominent Georgian restorationist with a home on North Great George"s St. and has lectured on Anglo-Irish literature with an emphasis on Joyce (Journal.ie, 23 Oct. 2011 - online; accessed 05.07.2023.)

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