Dan Boyne Interview and Old Film Clips of the Kellys

Just before Christmas I received an e-mail from Daniel Boyne, author of some famous books on rowing, among them The Red Rose Crew (2005) and Kelly: A Father, A Son, An American Quest. I am proud to say that I played a small part in publishing the latter, and that is why Dan was kind enough to send me an e-mail with a link to a video clip with an ABC interview of Dan just when the book was published the first time in 2008 – watch the interview with him above; it also has some interesting film clips of both Jack Kelly Sr. and Jr. Below find some words that I wrote about the Kelly book on 1 May 2012, when Lyons Press published the book as a paperback:

In 2008, Mystic Seaport published Daniel Boyne’s book Kelly: A Father, A Son, An American Quest, a rowing biography about Jack Kelly, Sr. and Jack Kelly, Jr. As I happened to be involved in the production at that time, yesterday I received an ‘advance copy’ of the book now when it will soon be published in a new edition. The 2012 soft cover (paperback) edition will be published by Lyons Press, which is an imprint of Globe Pequot Press in Connecticut, at a price of $16.95. Lyons Press has earlier published Boyne’s Essential Sculling (2000) and the soft cover edition of The Red Rose Crew (2005).

 Not only is the new edition of Kelly smaller in format and has a lower price than the hard cover edition, of course, some minor corrections have also been made of earlier lapsus calami. Although, I really like the first edition, with its airy design and beautifully reproduced black & white photographs, the Lyons edition sits very nicely in your hand and the illustrations are equally gorgeously reproduced.

This is truly a book for all of you who are interested in rowing on the Schuylkill River, Olympic rowing, and rowing at the Henley Royal just after the Second World War. It is also a book for those of you who are fascinated by Irish-American history in the Philadelphia area, the sometimes estranged relationship between the English and the Irish - and the English and the Americans. Dan Boyne has managed to write a remarkable story about an Irish-American family whose members were all special characters, not only Olympic champions or a princess of Monaco.