Dolours Price–Stephen Rea marriage

The marriage of Dolours Price and Stephen Rea brought domestic life, parenthood and public scrutiny into close contact with Price’s past as a convicted IRA militant. Their family life offered her a chance at a future she had once feared prison might have closed off, but it unfolded under press attention and the constraints attached to her release; the marriage eventually ended in 2003.

Public scrutiny and the terms of release

The terms of Price’s release placed the couple in an awkward position: Margaret Thatcher insisted that Price should not be allowed to live in England, and said that if she and Rea wanted to live together, they could do so in Northern Ireland. Later, newspapers discovered that Price was living in London with Rea, whose acting career was well established. Reports dwelt on the contrast between her past and the fashionable world around her, describing her at the National Theatre and raising the prospect that she might attend a royal gala for High Society at the Victoria Palace Theatre. Rea’s agent told the press that Price would not attend and that she would be at home; for propriety’s sake, he said, home meant Belfast.

Rea later said that marrying a notorious former IRA militant had not damaged his career, and that people in his profession had been generous. But questions about Price’s past followed him in interviews. He wanted journalists to discuss his work rather than his personal life or his wife’s politics, and he became known for abruptly ending interviews that turned to her. The press attention made the marriage a public subject even when Rea tried to keep it separate from his professional identity.

Children and an Irish childhood

A few days after New Year in 1989, Price and Rea had their first son, Fintan Daniel Sugar, who was to be known as Danny. A little over a year later they had a second son, Oscar, named after Oscar Wilde. Price joked in a letter to a friend that the baby looked like her, perhaps only temporarily, and asked whether the friend knew any babysitters. Rea described her as besotted with the children. In prison Price had feared that she might never have a child; motherhood gave her the chance to build something resembling an ordinary family life.

The family lived in London while keeping a home in Belfast. Rea wanted his sons to grow up with Irish accents and an Irish childhood, rather than to be raised as English children. Seamus Heaney composed an original poem for the boys on a Japanese fan, which the couple hung on the wall at home; the poem was never published. These details show a family life shaped not only by the places where the couple lived, but also by the cultural inheritance they hoped to pass on to their children.

Separation and the family home

By the mid-1990s, the family had moved to Dublin. Price liked the city and continued to hope her sons would retain their Belfast accents. In later years the marriage grew strained, and it ended in 2003. Price remained in the large family home in Malahide, north of Dublin, surrounded by memorabilia from her earlier notoriety. The home that had held the couple’s family life thus became, after their separation, Price’s own setting.