December 22

  • 1969 Bernadette Devlin was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment for her activities during the Battle of the Bogside
  • 1989 Samuel (Barclay) Beckett, novelist, poet and playwright, notably of En attendant Godot (1953), and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature (1969), died.
  • 1919 ‘Any attempt at [Ireland’s] secession will be fought with the same resolve as the Northern States of America put into the fight against the Southern States’—Lloyd George, speaking in the House of Commons.
  • 1916 Around 600 untried Irish internees were released from Frongoch and Lewes jails. Convicted prisoners remained in custody. James O’Kelly, Fenian, war correspondent and MP for County Roscommon, died.