Bretherton, Cyril Herbert Emmanuel

Bretherton, Cyril Herbert Emmanuel (1879–1939), journalist, was born 2 June 1879 at Little Crosby, near Liverpool, only son of Charles Edward Bretherton, barrister, of Heath House, Blackheath, south-east London. He was educated at St Augustine's, Ramsgate, and Harbourne, Ashford, both in Kent; and Lincoln College, Oxford (matriculated Oct. 1898; BA, BCL 1901). While working as an actor with a travelling theatre company, he was called to the bar by Gray's Inn (1903); in the same year he joined the Middle Temple and began contributing light verse to Punch, where he later used the pen-name ‘Algol’. Emigrating to Los Angeles, he took out American citizenship, became a member of the Californian bar (1907), and worked on the editorial staff of a Californian newspaper. Returning to England (1916), he joined the British army as a private in the Artists Rifles and was assigned to the Royal Ordnance Corps in Dublin, where he was involved in procuring wool. Demobilised with the rank of lieutenant in 1919, he started writing weekly features for the Irish Times entitled ‘Thoughts and theories’. To R. M. Smyllie (qv) this column, a forerunner to ‘An Irishman's diary’, was for upwards of a year probably the ‘most brilliant of its kind in any newspaper written in the English language’. A smitten Smyllie further attributed an ‘impish perversity’ to Bretherton, and remembered him as the ‘most remarkable, irritating, whimsical, brilliant, and lovable fellow’. Appointed to the permanent staff as a leader-writer, he is reputed to have been one of the first journalists to use a typewriter in Dublin. At this time he secretly became the Irish correspondent for the Morning Post and the Philadelphia Public Ledger, newspapers that revelled in his vitriolic anti-Irish viewpoint. Such was the nature of his invective during the Troubles that he was advised by the Philadelphia Public Ledger to take a holiday at their expense in the Baltic. In April 1922 Michael Collins (qv) asked Desmond Fitzgerald (qv) to get one of his people to interview Bretherton in a friendly manner about two of his Morning Post despatches, which Collins found very objectionable. Bretherton left Ireland in 1924 and joined the staff of the Morning Post, writing under the pseudonym ‘Peter Simple’. He worked for the Evening News (1927–39), continued to contribute regularly to Punch, and practiced as a barrister on the south-eastern circuit (1934–9). He may, however, be best remembered for his invective in The real Ireland (1925), where he argued that ‘with the possible exception of the Mexican, the Irishman does more of the things that he likes doing and less of the things he dislikes doing than any other human being’, and identified the keynote of the Irish character as a ‘dreadful frugality not born of poverty but of ignorance’. According to Bretherton, Sinn Féin failed because of ‘instinctive monarchy or chieftainism or matriarchy’. The book was suppressed after Joe McGrath (qv), whom Bretherton accused of being responsible for the murder of Noel Lemass (qv), took legal action and was awarded over £3,700 in damages. Bretherton's other publications include A zoovenir (1919), Rhyme and reason (1922), Midas, or the United States and the future (1926), and Poems by Algol (1946). Away from journalism, Bretherton had a passionate love of animals and spent much of his spare time when in Ireland in Dublin zoo, where he took a keen interest in the aquarium. He died 14 November 1939 in his rooms at the Middle Temple, leaving estate valued at £5,788 (net £2,619). An ardent catholic, he married Nora Bretherton, an Irishwoman, and lived at the Old Forge Cottage, South Morton, Berks., and Brick Court, London EC4. They had two children.