A meeting by the River Boyne.
At 63, Tom Reilly is an anxious, slightly hunted presence, one whose obsessive running regime has kept him young for his years. Spry and gaunt with a stubbly roughness around the edges, he reminded me of a rubbed-out-and-redrawn Quentin Blake illustration. He does not accept royalties for his books, he says, because his cause is too important. He has been mocked, scorned and remorselessly trolled for his views. There remains a small amount of strong, local animosity. Several years ago Reilly received handwritten death threats through his front door. When I asked him about it in person at the tail-end of last year, he was bluff and edgy. ‘I don’t think they ever will,’ he said. ‘In fact, you can put that on my gravestone: He didn’t think they ever would.’
On Tom Reilly, local Drogheda historian and the sole Irish member of the Friends of Oliver Cromwell Society.
