Martin McLoone, who has died at 73, was a pioneering influence in media and film studies. Born in Derry on July 12, 1950, he attended St Columb’s, the Catholic boys’ grammar school there, before studying English and history at University College Dublin, where he graduated in 1973.
The mercury is rising, there’s a grand stretch in the evenings, and to people of a certain age, this only means one thing: exam weather. For around 120,000 Irish schoolchildren, the final dastardly furlong is in sight, resulting in cramming, anxiety, and the thrum of low-level panic creeping in.