The Ireland of the early 1950s was not a hospitable place for literary endeavour, and Maynooth was, if anything, less hospitable still, for all the cultural and religious reasons with which we are now so familiar. That was to change with the appointment of Fr. Peter Connolly as Professor of English Language and Literature in the autumn of 1954. But in the aftermath of the death of Fr. Neil Kevin in the previous year, and as the college awaited the return to Ireland of Fr. Connolly, then at Oxford, the duties of familiarising young seminarians with the glories of the English language fell to a young layman of unusual background in what might be regarded as an adventurous appointment.

Sean J. White, who had, it is true, spent a few years in the seminary of the Kiltegan Fathers in Wicklow, was recruited as a lecturer, and brought to his task a background that also took in Oxford, where he had studied after graduating in Arts from the NUI (one source says UCC, one UCG). He was celebrated as the first lay academic to be employed by the college since Eamonn de Valera spent a short time (1912-13) as Head of the Department of Mathematics and Mathematical Physics at the college (after which he applied unsuccessfully for the Professorship of Mathematics at UCC) but in fact there were several claimants to that title, including William A. Williams, Professor of Education from 1926, and Daniel Binchy, Professor of Canon Law from 1943.

He would go on to lead a diverse career that oscillated between the pure literary, the commercial and the academic, becoming latterly the director of a number of alternative education institutions, the Institute of Irish Studies in Ballsbridge and the Burren Art Centre in Clare, as well as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Limerick. At his death in September 1996, he was survived by his brothers, Tom, an Archbishop in the Vatican's Diplomatic Service who had recently retired as Papal Nuncio to New Zealand and the Pacific (where he was succeeded by Archbishop Patrick Coveney) and Liam, a London-based photo journalist; and his sisters May, a translator/interpreter and Alice, a pharmacist.

The Irish Times reported his death in its news columns on Saturday September 7 1996, under Patsy McGarry's byline, as follows:

THE academic, journalist, and broadcaster, Mr Sean J. White, died suddenly while walking in the Burren, Co Clare, yesterday. He was 69. A former Irish Press journalist who subsequently worked in publicity with Bord Failte and CIE, in recent years he held the post of Professor of Irish Studies at the University of Limerick.

He was born in Durrow, Co Laois, and attended St Kieran's College in Kilkenny. Afterwards, he spent time at St Patrick's seminary in Kiltegan before going to UCC, where he took a degree in English. Subsequently, he went to Oxford where he continued with his English studies, before he began lecturing at St Patrick's Maynooth - the first layman to do so since Eamon de Valera taught maths there at the beginning of the century.

During this time he also began editing Irish Writing, a bi monthly literary publication and contemporary of The Bell. During his 10 year tenure there he published first works by Brendan Behan, Patrick Kavanagh and Valentine Iremonger.

In 1958, he began working at the Irish Press where he was theatre critic for a time. For five years, and along with Benedict Kiely, he wrote the Patrick Lagan column, a full page weekly article about events all over the country.

He continued with the Irish Press until 1965 when he went to work for Bord Failte, becoming head of its publicity and public relations for the US in 1967. For the subsequent four years, he lived in New York.

At the end of 1970, he returned to Ireland to become director of publicity and public relations at CIE, a post he held until 1975. That year he left public relations and became a freelance journalist, contributing articles to Ireland of the Welcomes and The Irish Times. In 1979, he was appointed Dean of the School of Irish Studies and was later employed as a consultant to the Irish studies department at what was to become Limerick University. He was later appointed professor there.

Mr White regularly broadcast on RTE Radio 1, where he contributed to the Thomas Davis Lectures series, as well as theatre and literary criticism. He will be best remembered in this context for his appearances on Sunday Miscellany and On This Day.

Mr White is survived by his wife, Mary, daughter, Nicola, who is visual arts director at the centre for contemporary arts in Glasgow, and by his son, Jonathan, who is an actor and writer.

Mr White was also the director of the Irish studies programme at the Burren College of Art. "If he could have picked the way and place to go, it would have been the Burren," Jonathan told The Irish Times last night.

 

His friend Benedict Kiely, with whom he had worked as a writer for the Irish Press, where they produced a regular column under the title Patrick Lagan, wrote the following piece, which was published anonymously in the Irish Times on October 24 1996:

Sean J. White died on a walk in the Burren of County Clare: a land that he knew well and loved intensely. And many friends he had there, for he was a man who understood the noblest aspects of friendship. He knew all Ireland that way, from the centre all round to the sea. And it is my delight and sad sorrow, now, to remember that there are hew corners of Ireland that we did not see together.

But about the company in which we first met. There was M.J. MacManus, great gentleman and journalist, Francis MacManus, great novelist, and Kevin B. Nowlan, my college contemporary and friend and all in the presence of R.M. Smyllie who needs no introduction. That was a great gathering of friends.

There were few Irish roads and by roads that Sean White and myself did not travel together. I had some slight acquaintance with the Midland places he came from. And it was a joy to revisit, in his learned company. the woods and the lake of Emo Park, and to visit his homeplace and his family in Durrow, in the County Laois. And back in Dublin City, our lives were close together.

We worked together on The Irish Press. He was an alert and most intelligent newspaperman; he was also a highly qualified academic. He had come out of St. Kieran's in Kilkenny and after that, St. Patrick's in Kiltegan, and then UCG. And after that, on to Oxford, and then to feature in St Patrick's in Maynooth. He owned and edited, for ten years, Irish Writing, an excellent literary periodical and, at that time, helped and encouraged many young writers.

He worked for Bord Failte in New York for many years. And could there have been a better man to tell the world about Ireland? He came back to his beloved Ireland to work at publicity and public relations for our own transport company. Later, he was Dean of the School of Irish Studies, and, again, a professor at Limerick University.