Merrily Harpur
Obituary
Merrily Harpur, who studied English Language and Literature between 1967 and 1971, died on 4th December 2024 in Dorset. During her undergraduate years, when the English Department offered teachers of the calibre of Brendan Kennelly, David Norris, Eilean Ni Chuileannain and Eavan Boland, Merrily threw herself into both the academic and the social life of the university. As a Senior Freshman, she attended the Elizabethan Garden Party wearing a stuffed Rhode Island Red hen on her head, leading to a photograph of her appearing in the Irish Times, but in her final year she took on the more serious role of co-editing the poetry magazine Icarus. The issue was outstanding, not only for the quality of the poems within its covers, but also because it showcased Merrily’s prodigious gift for cartoons and illustrations.
After graduation, she worked for a spell as a picture restorer, but then her career moved triumphantly into the world of cartooning and book illustration. Alan Coren, the editor of Punch magazine, recognised her brilliance and gave her a weekly double page spread for her witty, elegant cartoons. Soon she was contributing to The Guardian, The Spectator and The Times, and her work was also published in The Irish Times, The Irish Independent and Irish Tatler. In addition, she drew weekly cartoon strips for the Sunday Telegraph and the London Evening Standard, her speciality being gentle mockery of the faux pas and pretentions of city people with a weekend place in the countryside.
She was much in demand as an illustrator of books, too, including work by Kingsley Amis, Miles Kington, Gerald Durrell and James Fenton. Merrily Harpur was not only gifted as an artist – she was also a fine writer. In 2004, she won the K250 International Poetry Prize and her poems were shortlisted for the Irish National Poetry Competition and the UK Poetry Society’s National Poetry Competition.
Merrily Harpur was not only gifted as an artist – she was also a fine writer. In 2004, she won the K250 International Poetry Prize and her poems were shortlisted for the Irish National Poetry Competition and the UK Poetry Society’s National Poetry Competition.She wrote and illustrated a number of books, including The Nightmares of Dream Topping, Unheard Of Ambridge and Pig Overboard. Always following her own enthusiasms, she became fascinated by reports of ‘anomalous big cats’ and wrote a well researched book, Mystery Big Cats, which attracted the attention of writer John Michell, with whom she shared an interest in crop circles and other unexplained phenomena.
Another passion was for Irish traditional music and she became friendly with the Chieftains, and wrote sleeve notes for albums by Matt Molloy and John Carty.
Although her career as a cartoonist began in London, she was able, via the newly invented fax machine, to relocate to a cottage near Schull, west Cork, and there she lived until the mid 1990s, when her desire to create a garden led her to move to a tiny cottage on the slopes of the Sliabh Bawn Mountains, not far from Strokestown, Co Roscommon.
She did, indeed, create a garden, as well as planting a maze of her own design, and then in 1998, with her friend, local man Pat Compton, she went on to co-found the Strokestown International Poetry Competition. This continues to this day as the Strokestown International Poetry Festival, its high point being, perhaps, in 2006, when Seamus Heaney gave a reading and later joined in an impromptu singing session in a local pub.
In 2003, Merrily Harpur moved one last time, to a village in Dorset, where she devoted herself almost entirely to painting - oil paintings, for the most part – landscapes and still lifes. She found time, however, to write the libretto to an opera written for a Fox Festival that she organised, to support the local church and to keep hens in her garden.
She is survived by her three brothers, Patrick, John and James, their partners Charlotte and Eveline, and her niece Arin.