Conor Fennell is a journalist and former editor with RTE Television News. Born in Dublin in 1943 and educated at Blackrock College and University College Dublin, he started his career with the Irish Press in the 1960s. He diverted into public relations for some years before joining RTE as a reporter in 1979. Among the stories he covered were the Fastnet yacht disaster, Hurricane Charlie, the Jennifer Guinness kidnapping and several State visits. He presented Countrywide, a television programme of news around the country, in the 1980s. Subsequently he was appointed Television Chief Sub Editor in the News Division.
As a young reporter he became interested in the life and works of Ernest Hemingway and this led to a fascination with 1920s Literary Paris. When, in later years, he read books about James Joyce, including Richard Ellmann’s authoritative biography, he began looking into the Irish writer’s time in Paris and how he related to the expatriate writers there, among them Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald. He became particularly interested in Joyce’s friendship with Irish writers whose company he enjoyed and whom he exploited unashamedly. This interest has been the driving force in his writing A Little Circle Of Kindred Minds: James Joyce In Paris.
A keen sailor and a Francophile, Conor Fennell regularly visits Paris and the south of France. He lives in Sandycove – within a stone’s throw of Joyce’s Tower.
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