Our Lady of Liberty!

When the ‘Savoy‘ cinema in Monaghan Street was blown up in 1953 after showing the newsreel of the Coronation, I rushed into my granny’s house from school at dinner-time with the news that ‘the Catholics blew up the Savoy!’

Her Catholic next-door neighbour was sitting on a chair behind the door where I hadn’t seen her and firmly informed me that it wasn’t Catholics who had done it but the IRA.

That was a distinction that hadn’t occurred to me or any of my school-mates.  

Looking back, that was a very important moment in my life.

Incidentally the ‘Frontier’ cinema in Newry regularly showed ‘Columbia‘ films and when we went there on Saturday mornings, we all thought that the Statue of Liberty logo with the radiating torch and crown was the Virgin Mary!  

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