Ruth Kelly Walsh obituary: Fashion writer who lived life to the full

Born: September 19th 1927

Died: September 5th 2026

Ruth Kelly Walsh was the sort of woman who, if a character in fiction, would have hurtled through her life, social and professional, like a seasonal firework display, startling but simultaneously entertaining all around her.

Sometime after the death of her husband, she was asked if she fancied another relationship.

“Not really,” she told the writer Emily Hourican. “I couldn’t be bothered, and the really nice ones, the ones that you could really share a life with, are gay. But I’ve loads of friends. Life is full of things to do, people to see.”

And though well into her 80s at the time of that interview, she adapted Yeats to pronounce: “Old and grey and not full of sleep!”

Ferociously intelligent and at times acerbic, while she was known mainly as a fashion writer, she was also hugely interested in politics and current events. She had a knowledge of and love for plants and animals, was quietly kind and a lot of fun to be with.

She died in her 98th year and, while missed by those who loved her, “you couldn’t mourn her because of the person she was”, according to her friend and fellow journalist, Micheline McCormack.

Francesca Ruth Kelly was born in Dublin in September 1927. She was the daughter of Frank Kelly and his wife Anna (née Fitzsimons). A second, adopted daughter, Nancy, was seven years younger than Kelly Walsh.

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Kelly Walsh’s lineage was somewhat exotic and filled with seeming contradictions, a heady mix that translated into her own life.

Her early years were spent in Oldcourt House in Bray, Co Wicklow, where her father was something of a dilettante chicken farmer as well as an accomplished amateur painter. Born in England but of Irish extraction, Frank Kelly met Michael Collins while both were working in the post office in London.

Recruited into the Gaelic League and possibly also the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the main organisation behind the Easter Rising, Frank Kelly moved to Dublin in 1916. As a member of the Kimmage garrison, he took part in the Rising, was in the GPO and was later interned.

Afterwards, and as a confidant to Collins, he worked in the Sinn Féin headquarters at No 6 Harcourt Street. He helped Collins effect the escape of Éamon de Valera from Lincoln Gaol in February 1919, as well as his onward flight to the United States, where he drummed up support for Irish independence.

Meanwhile, Anna Fitzsimons came from a well-to-do rural background but was tired of the social swirl associated with countryside living. As her daughter Ruth Kelly Walsh later put it, she could not “take another hunt ball”, and ran off to Dublin where she too met Collins.

From 1917 on, she was secretary to Sinn Féin general secretary Patrick O’Keeffe, as well as to Collins. Known to all as Fitzie or Miss Fitz, her role thrust her into contact with Frank Kelly and, in July 1921, they married.

Frank Kelly’s chicken farming days were shortened by a fire at Oldcourt House, and the family moved, variously, to Blackrock and Rathgar, settling on Rathgar Avenue in the former home of George Russell, the writer and artist who used the pseudonym AE.

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Ruth Kelly Walsh’s secondary education was at Alexandra College, then in Earlsfort Terrace in central Dublin, from where she went to Trinity College. There, however, she failed to pass what was known colloquially as the “Little Go” exam, a test at the end of second year to determine whether a student had learned enough to progress.

Kelly Walsh’s mother, Fitzie, was by now a senior figure in the Irish Press, the newspaper founded by de Valera in 1931 to reflect the Fianna Fáil worldview. Although women’s editor, Fitzie also reported from de Valera’s speeches to the League of Nations in New York and once interviewed Adolf Hitler.

Initially, Kelly Walsh had little love of journalism. She said later that she was thrown into it “because my fed up mother didn’t know what to do with me”. She added, however: “I had great fun.”

In those early days, Kelly Walsh reported on everything from the Children’s Court to agriculture shows. Like her mother before her, she too wrote for the women’s page, the contents of which were of their time – advice for homemaker matters, such as knitting and cooking.

It was while at the Irish Press that she met her husband, Dick Walsh, later political editor of this newspaper, who was 10 years her junior. After their marriage, she became known as Ruth Kelly Walsh, and the couple initially lived in the Kelly house in Rathgar, Kelly Walsh’s mother by now being deceased and her father living alone.

Soon, however, they moved to London where their twin daughters, Francesca and Suzie, were born. There, Kelly Walsh worked for the Farmers’ Union and the Manchester Evening News while Dick Walsh worked variously for London local newspapers, including the Kilburn Times and the Wimbledon Borough News.

They returned to Ireland when the girls were two. Dick Walsh initially worked for Arrow Advertising, the Connacht Tribune and eventually, The Irish Times. At the same time, Kelly Walsh cut a swathe through the Dublin media world: she helped found, and was the first editor of, Women’s Way; she hosted RTÉ Radio sponsored programmes, That’s Life and Help Yourself; she succeeded her mother as women’s editor at the Irish Press and, for 27 years, was fashion editor at the RTÉ Guide.

She was famously gregarious, hosting lunches and dinners in her various homes and in hotels around Dublin. One such was a regular Friday gathering in the art deco Camden Delux Hotel of what she called her “press gang”. Regular attendees included, but were not confined to, McCormack, fashion photographer Eve Holmes and Mairead Dunne, public relations officer for the Goods Council.

Others in her circle included Charles Haughey’s mistress, the socialite and journalist Terry Keane.

“She was fashion mad,” McCormack said of Kelly Walsh.

A regular feature of the lunches involved Kelly disappearing to trawl the swop shops of the Camden Street area, returning with castoffs from others that looked a million dollars on her. She always wore a hat.

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There was more than a touch of Absolutely Fabulous about her life and personality, according to Francesca – Keane notionally being Joanna Lumley’s hilariously over-the-top Patsy while Kelly Walsh was cast notionally as Edina.

“She was difficult,” recalled another friend. “No. She wasn’t difficult. She was impossible! Nothing was ever enough, nothing was ever good enough.”

Behind the AbFab persona, however, there was a sharp intelligence.

When Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev visited Ireland, the press corps greeted him and concentrated on him alone. Kelly Walsh, on the other hand, also welcomed his wife, Raisa Gorbacheva, shaking her hand and asking her questions as well.

In the mid-1970s, her marriage to Walsh broke down. “She rose,” said Francesca, “and kept the show on the road. She really was a woman out of her time.”

After 10 years, Walsh returned – “he just gradually moved back”, said Francesca. By now, Walsh’s condition (he suffered from ankylosing spondylitis) was gradually buckling his back and crushing his chest organs.

They lived initially in Shankill and then in Bellevue, a 19th century home on Bray’s Killarney Road with a rambling garden. There, the couple indulged their love of plants and animals.

Their seven cats and four dogs included Hoover, a pointer Kelly Walsh acquired at a car boot sale and who had a penchant for bringing sticks into Dick Walsh’s bed, where they both – man and dog – slept. There was a lone chicken named Hen, who had the run of the house and liked to sit on Dick Walsh’s lap, eyeballing anyone who came near.

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Shortly after moving again (this time to a grand house: Kilmurray in Thomastown, Kilkenny), Dick Walsh died in 2003, and Kelly Walsh eventually returned to Bray. She spent her latter years enjoying the company of friends, reading, watching documentaries and travelling (Egypt was a favourite).

“She was stylish, loving and kind,” said Francesca. “She had a wonderful life. She had guts – no one ever told her ‘no’.”

Ruth Kelly Walsh is survived by her twin daughters, Francesca and Suzie; her son-in-law, Jonathan; and grandchildren, Millie and Sara.