Brendan Hughes (16 October 1948 – 16 February 2008), also known as "The Dark", was a leading" Irish republican and former Officer Commanding (OC) of the Belfast Brigade of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). He is best known as the leader of the 1980 Irish hunger strike.

Hughes was born into a republican Catholic family from the lower Falls Road area of Belfast, Northern Ireland. He was a cousin of Charles Hughes, who was the OC of D Company in the Provisional IRA Belfast Brigade during the Falls Curfew, and was shot and killed in March 1971 by the Official Irish Republican Army during the feud between the Provisional and Official IRA.

Hughes joined the IRA in 1969, sided with the Provisional faction in the split of 1969-70, and was "on the run" in Belfast by 1970. From 1970-1972 Hughes was involved in a number of attacks on British soldiers and bank robberies in order to raise funds for the republican movement.

Hughes described his normal day during that period as "you would have had a call house [a safe meeting place] and you might have robbed a bank in the morning, done a float [gone out in a car looking for a British soldier] in the afternoon, stuck a bomb and a booby trap out after that, and then maybe had a gun battle or two later that night."

Saint Brendan of Clonfert or Bréanainn of Clonfert (c. 484 – c. 577) (Irish: Naomh Breandán; Icelandic: Brandanus) called "the Navigator", "the Voyager", or "the Bold" is one of the early Irish monastic saints. He is chiefly renowned for his legendary quest to the "Isle of the Blessed," also called St Brendan's Island. The Voyage of St Brendan could be called an immram (Irish navigational story). He was one of the Twelve Apostles of Ireland.

Saint Brendan's feast day is celebrated on 16 May by Catholics, Anglicans, and Eastern Orthodox Christians.

In 484 Saint Brendan was born in Ciarraighe Luachra near the port of Tralee, in County Kerry, in the province of Munster, in the south-west of Ireland. He was baptised at Tubrid, near Ardfert, by Saint Erc. For five years he was educated under Saint Ita, "the Brigid of Munster", and he completed his studies under Saint Erc, who ordained him priest in 512. Between the years 512 and 530 St Brendan built monastic cells at Ardfert, and, at the foot of Mount Brandon, Shanakeel— Seana Cill, usually translated as "the old church"— also called Baalynevinoorach.

Alan James Ryan, FBA (born 9 May 1940) was Warden of New College, Oxford, and Professor of Politics at the University of Oxford and currently a lecturer at Princeton University.

He was educated at Christ's Hospital, Balliol College, Oxford, and University College, London. Elected a fellow of New College in 1969, he returned in 1996 to take up the Wardenship. He was made a Fellow of the British Academy in 1986.

Ryan is a recognised authority on the work of John Stuart Mill, having contributed directly to the ‘Reversionary’ school, which led to a re-examination of Mill’s work from the 1970s. His academic work also takes in broader themes in political theory, including the philosophy of social science, the nature of property, and liberalism of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Ryan has held positions at the Universities of Oxford, Essex, Keele, Princeton University, as well as the University of Virginia School of Law. He was also a Visiting Professor of Political Science at The New School.

Ryan is a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books, the London Review of Books, and the Times Literary Supplement. Ryan can be heard here giving a brief account of Mill's philosophy, and a defence of him as the greatest British philosopher, on the BBC Radio 4 programme In Our Time.