Synopsis
David Norris is one of Ireland's most popular, colourful and charismatic public figures. Not a man to shy away from controversy, he has spent most of his adult life challenging the establishment, whether as a leading campaigner for gay rights, a passionate conservationist, an unconventional academic and Joycean scholar, a brilliant raconteur, or, since 1987, a fiercely independent Senator and outspoken defender of human rights. David was born in the Belgian Congo to an English father, who died when David was just six, and an Irish mother, who died when he was 21. David has lived in Dublin from the age of six months, and the city of Ulysses remains one of his great passions. At a time when crass demolition and development was rampant in the 1970s, he spear-headed the revival of Georgian Dublin, particularly through his campaign to save North Great George's Street, where he has lived for over thirty years. But it is David Norris's campaign to decriminalize homosexuality that will stand as his major legacy. Over a long sixteen years, and despite rejections by the Irish High and Supreme Courts, he fought a bruising battle to overturn the Victorian law. With the help of lawyer Mary Robinson, who would later become Ireland's first woman president, he finally won a historic victory in the European Court of Human Rights in 1988, though it would be another five years before the law was finally changed. David's decision to run for President of Ireland in 2011 was not lightly taken, but it proved to be the most bruising period of his life. His popularity and the public affection towards him saw him quickly established as the front-runner, but all of that was to change over a hugely controversial summer, when a sustained media campaign put paid to his chances. Letters emerged, which he had written in 1997 in defence of his former partner Ezra Nawi, who had been convicted of statutory rape. After initially dropping out of the presidential race, David made the decision to re-enter it, but the momentum, and his moment, had been lost. In these pages, David Norris reveals for the first time the full, no-holds-barred story of his presidential campaign, and of how he recovered from the defeat. A Kick Against the Pricks is a brilliant, deeply revealing autobiography, a remarkable journey from the margins to the centre of Irish society.
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À propos de l'auteur
Senator David Norris has been an Independent member of Seanad Eireann since 1987. He won a historic constitutional challenge in 1988 to the laws criminalizing homosexuality in Ireland. Senator Norris was a candidate in the 2011 Irish presidential election. He is a former lecturer at Trinity College Dublin, a Joycean scholar, a conservationist and a passionate defender of human rights.
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