Border Foray by Richard Hayward (RB247)

Published 1957: First Edition / Hardcover / Very Good Condition / Illustrated Map-endpapers

Original beige cloth with brown titles on the spine and original pictorial dust jacket. 190 very clean and bright pages, previous owners details on the first 2 pages. Covers slightly rubbed with time and bumped on the corners consistent with age. Dust jacket slightly rubbed and faded with time and chipped along the edges consistent with age but remains intact. (RB247)

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Who has heard of Richard Hayward? Almost nobody these days. But for nearly half a century until his death in 1964 this extraordinarily energetic and prolific writer, singer, actor, director, film-maker, folklorist, tour guide, journalist and broadcaster was a one-man industry promoting the beauty of the Irish landscape and the glories of Irish history and culture. He was known by everybody who was anybody in the two Irish jurisdictions, from prime ministers and taoisigh through writers and theatre producers to film and concert stars. Frank O’Connor, Sean O’Faolain and Tyrone Guthrie spoke highly of his work, although Louis MacNeice and Richard Murphy were less impressed. And he was an Orangeman.

Border Foray showed one of those contradictions: the unionist face of Richard Hayward that was not normally on display (although he was a member of the Ulster Unionist Party). It was researched and written just after the Irish Government’s abortive international anti-partition drive and during the IRA’s 1950s campaign of attacks on RUC border barracks and customs posts. Despite his declaration that he was no politician, it is his most political book. On the border campaign he had this to say: “The madness of 1922 is now descending upon us in a hateful recrudescence, and the current destroyers, in the guise of armed and irresponsible ‘liberators’, are set upon another campaign of violence and destruction … An acceptance by the Republic, in friendship and goodwill, of the accomplished fact of Northern Ireland’s legal and constitutional en-tity, and a cessation from tiresome and futile ravings against a partition that is based on law and common sense, would without doubt result in great and lasting benefits to Ireland as a whole.” Even here, however, his sense of humour was not far from the surface. He recalled how he knocked on the door of a border customs hut one summer evening to have his car papers stamped. “But a farmer near the end of his labour in an adjoining field saw what I was at and called out to me: ‘You needn’t knock there, mister. Sure there’s no Border at this time of the day: the man’s away for his tay.”

https://drb.ie/articles/the-orangeman-who-loved-ireland/