Patrick Cosgrave

Patrick John Francis Cosgrave (28 September 1941 – 16 September 2001) was an Anglophile Irish journalist and writer, and a staunch supporter of the British Conservative Party. He was an advisor to future Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, whilst she was Leader of the Opposition.

Patrick Cosgrave was the only child of an improvident builder, who died from cancer when Patrick was ten, leaving his mother impoverished. She took work as a cleaner in the Chapel Royal in Dublin Castle. Cosgrave rebelled against the severe Roman Catholic piety of his mother and his teachers at St. Vincent's C.B.S. in Glasnevin. He acquired a love of British history aged 14, while reading as a convalescent from rheumatic fever. He read works by Rudyard Kipling, Winston Churchill, and Lawrence of Arabia.

At University College Dublin (UCD), he was influenced by Desmond Williams, professor of history. He embraced the epithet "West Brit"; at a debate, when an opponent accused him of being "to the Right of Douglas-Home", he retorted that he was "to the Right of Lord Salisbury". He claimed that his grandfather, a warden in Mountjoy Prison, had beaten up Kevin Barry, a Republican rebel executed in 1920. He partnered Anthony Clare to win the Irish Times debate and the Observer Mace debate, and was elected auditor of the Literary and Historical Society in spite of his unpopular pro-British views.