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Her pugnacious writing on women’s rights, gay rights and other issues helped turn her country into one of the most progressive in Europe.
Sept. 6, 2024, 5:53 p.m. ET
Nell McCafferty, a pugnacious Irish journalist whose outsize reputation and outspoken views on women’s rights, gay rights and Irish nationalism helped her country move on from an era of cosseted social conservatism to become one of the most progressive countries in Europe, died on Aug. 21 in Fahan, a rural area of northwest Ireland. She was 80.
Her death, in a nursing home, was announced in a statement from her family, who said she had been in declining health for several years after having a stroke.
Few nonfiction writers captured the Irish public as tightly or for as long as Ms. McCafferty. Like the singer Sinead O’Connor and a handful of other public figures, she was known, loved and sometimes despised by her first name — everyone in Ireland seemed to have an opinion about Nell.
That’s in large part because Ms. McCafferty seemed to have an opinion about everything in Ireland: big issues like feminism and gay rights (she was for them) as well as more mundane matters like public smoking bans (she was against them) and getting old (she was ambivalent).
Ms. McCafferty expressed her views as a correspondent for The Irish Times and later as a freelancer; as the author of six books, including a memoir, “Nell” (2004); and as a tireless speaker and broadcast personality.
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