TV show clears up dispute over ‘the greatest wedding photo of all time’

AN Irish television series claims to have solved an ongoing dispute over the seating arrangement for what it calls the ‘greatest wedding photo of all time’.

The famous photo – of the wedding of Irish freedom fighter Tom Barry and his wife Leslie Price in 1921 – has long held a fascination for Irish historians.

The image, taken at Vaughan’s Hotel on Parnell Square in Dublin on August 22nd 1921 – came about exactly one year before General Michael Collins was shot. Collins is seen in the back row, holding his head to one side, and many believe it was because he did not want to be readily identified at the time.

But another element of the fascinating photo – which includes so many famous names from Irish history – is the placement of Tom Barry and his wife Leslie Price.

It has long been said that 1916 leader DeValera is seated in the middle of the wedded couple.

But when the photo was reproduced by The Southern Star last year, a reader disputed this, and said for years Leslie’s placement had been mistaken for a guest’s – Nancy Wyse-Power.

And that De Valera was actually sitting to one side of the couple.

The reader – Ted O’Sullivan from Douglas in Cork city, a grandson of Ted O’Sullivan, who is in the photo, seen at the back on the left – said he had attended Guagán Barra Daonscoil in 2015 which had a series of talks on the photo.

All present had ‘agreed that the caption was incorrect’ but, he added, they believed the error had gained a long life, ‘probably as a means to criticise/disparage Eamon DeValera’.

However, the producers of the Ireland’s Greatest Love Stories series on TG4 now believe it is Ted’s assertion which is incorrect.

Speaking to The Southern Star, series director Paddy O’Shea said that after extensively researching the photograph for the episode on Barry and Price, with the assistance of a number of historians, he was happy that the original caption – which puts DeValera in the middle of the happy couple – is the correct one.

‘We compared images of Price with other images of her, and images of Wyse-Power, and we are satisfied that she is, in fact, sitting beside DeValera, with her husband on the far side of him,’ he said.

The episode, which aired on TG4 last week, showed how the couple’s relationship blossomed during their time in West Cork, after the death of Price’s partner Charlie Hurley.

Having formed a strong bond after Hurley’s funeral, the couple realised they had a common passion: the fight for Irish freedom.

Outliving many of the more familiar players in the War of Independence and the Civil War, the couple lived into old age in Cork city, and frequented the Victoria Hotel and the Hi-B bar, close to their home on Patrick Street.

Barry’s book Guerilla Days in Ireland was seen as the seminal guide on guerilla warfare for many years, and its fanbase was reported as even including Argentinian revolutionary Che Guevara.

Leslie Price, meanwhile, a member of Cumann na mBan, and a leading light in the Irish Red Cross, was later instrumental in the setting-up of both Gorta and VHI.

• The series, Scéalta Grá na hÉireann, can be viewed on the TG4 player