When Tony O’Reilly died in May aged 88 - he had once been the wealthiest Irishman - he was accused by the Irish Times of having ‘Anglophile tendencies’ and holding Winston Churchill in great esteem.
When he became the first Irish citizen to be knighted by Elizabeth II, he ‘attracted some hostility in his homeland by proudly insisting that he should henceforth be addressed as Sir Anthony’. He had, it was claimed, ‘little time for nationalism’.
I knew Tony
