Scottish Catholic Observer

Sir Tom Devine will give a public lecture at Glasgow University on Monday on the late John Durkan a teacher of both children and clergy; a prolific academic without an academic post; a scholarly researcher and a ‘typical Glaswegian’ known for his personality and generosity as much as for his renowned writing.

Mr Durkan was born in Shettleston in 1914 and died in 2006 at the age of 92. The son of Irish immigrants from County Mayo, he attended St Paul’s Primary and St Mungo’s Academy, Bridgeton. By aged 17, he was writing poetry professionally. His life studying history was sparked whilst serving in the intelligence core during WW2 and finding with great frustration that he had none of the answers to questions asked of him on Scotland’s past.

The schoolteacher began researching and publishing on the history of the reformation, and helped bring in a new wave of objective research that focused on primary sources.

“In the 1940s and 1950s it was very easy to take ‘the Catholic view’ or ‘the protestant view,’ but what John Durkan did was, right from the beginning, he said that what will dictate what is written is where the scholarship takes us,” Raymond McCluskey of the St Andrew’s Foundation for Catholic Teacher Education and a friend of Mr Durkan, said. “He was a great advocate of going back and looking at the original documents. He became famous for during his summer holidays going to the Mitchell Library, or the Vatican Library.”

On his 80th birthday, Mr Durkan was honoured at a conference in New College at Edinburgh University, where Cardinal Thomas Winning paid tribute to him as one layperson who criticised the clergy with impunity.

“He was a very proud Glaswegian; he was proud of his origins and proud of his Irish origins,” Mr McCluskey said.

“Towards the end of his life, through my door would come envelopes full of cuttings from The Tablet or The Catholic Observer that he thought were interesting; to me that’s a very generous thing, that’s Glasgow. And it is being generous with his time and being generous with his encouragement of young scholars.”

Dr Durkan worked on the history of Glasgow Cathedral during its Catholic period, and his work on Bishop William Turnbull, who founded Glasgow University, is still used as a critical text for those researching the history of the university. In 1950, he founded The Innes Review, the journal of the Scottish Catholic Historical Association, and he went on to teach Scottish seminarians.

In 1993, St Pope John Paul II raised Mr Durkan to Knight Commander of the Order of St Gregory, recognising his contribution to Catholic history and his work on Church commissions.

Monday’s lecture will hope to introduce a man highly respected within the academic and historical world to a wider audience unfamiliar with his impact.

— The Durkan Achievement lecture, organised in conjunction with The Newman Association, will be given by Sir Tom Devine on Monday October 27 at 5pm and will take place in Glasgow University’s Sir Charles Wilson Lecture Theatre at 1 University Avenue. To register for a place, email your details to [email protected]

— [email protected]

—Read the full version of this story in October 24 edition of the SCO in parishes from Friday.