Jonathan and Olivia Kinsella, Henry’s parents
Archival footage taken from a 1998 programme, The Island of Secrets.
Olivia: We met in 1965.
Jonathan: I thought we met in ’64?
Olivia: No, darling. It was 1965. I was only twenty-two – can you imagine? I was a baby.
Interviewer: Legend has it you first met in a Kinsella hotel.
Jonathan: Yes, that’s correct.
Interviewer: Most of the people watching this programme will have heard of Kinsella Hotels; many will have stayed in one at some time or another. It’s one of the most successful hotel chains in the UK.
Olivia: And Ireland, please. We’ve been a free state since 1922, lest you forget.
Interviewer: Sorry, yes, my mistake. The UK and Ireland. And you built it from scratch, Jonathan, you’re entirely self-made. It really is a remarkable story.
Jonathan: I got lucky.
Olivia: Luck had nothing to do with it, Jon. (looks at interviewer) My husband came from nothing. He grew up on a council estate where most of his friends were either in jail or dead before they turned eighteen. His mother was an alcoholic, his father left before Jonny was even born. Nothing was handed to him, like this younger generation seems to expect. He never looked for handouts, did you, darling? Pulled himself up by his bootstraps.
Jonathan: Yes, well, I was lucky in other ways. I met Robert.
Interviewer: You’re referring to Robert Calloway of the Calloway London Group?
Jonathan: Yes. By the time I met Robert, I’d been working at Calloway London for about five years. I’d worked my way up from kitchen staff to restaurant manager and I guess Mr Calloway saw something in me. I didn’t drink – couldn’t stand the stuff, not after what it had done to my mother – and that marked me out as different in this industry, more serious, I suppose. Reliable. But that’ll only get you so far – you still need someone to believe in you. And Robert did. He took a punt on me when no one else would. And when I found the right property –the place was cheap, it was falling down and infested with rats, but it was near the King’s Road. That was where all the cool people were, the artists and—
Olivia: Mary Quant opened her first store there! London was so much fun in the sixties.
Jonathan: It was the right place to be, if you wanted to get that crowd, and I did. I knew I couldn’t get their parents – and those kids wouldn’t want to hang out anywhere their folks approved of at any rate. But the banks wouldn’t lend me the money; they said I was an ‘unproven entity’. It was Robert who backed me. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you.
Olivia: You paid Robert Calloway back within three years. The full loan, with interest. That man had nothing to complain about.
Jonathan: Then I opened the second Kinsella Hotel in 1964—
Olivia: 1965, darling.
Jonathan: Sorry, 1965.
Interviewer: And you were a receptionist at the hotel, is that correct, Olivia?
Olivia: Yes. I wasn’t the usual type for a job like that – I was Irish, I didn’t have the right accent, I didn’t go to the right schools. But I went for the interview anyway, because word on the street was the man who owned the hotel wasn’t the usual type either – his surname was Kinsella, for heaven’s sake! I presumed he was Irish too, thought it might help my case. And it must have done, because I got the job.
Jonathan: It helped that she had a cracking pair of legs. She still does.
Olivia: Jon, really.
Interviewer: And was it love at first sight?
Jonathan: It was for me. I was thirty at the time—
Olivia: And unmarried, and never seemed to date anyone. People were beginning to talk.
Jonathan: Who was ‘talking’? No one cared about that stuff in those days.
Olivia: None of the kids on the King’s Road cared, darling. But others did, including the bank managers you were so desperately trying to charm. Here was this man in his early thirties, successful, but permanently single. You can imagine what people thought.
Jonathan: I didn’t have time to date! I was trying to get a business off the ground.
Olivia: You mean you were waiting for the right person, darling.
Jonathan: Sorry, yes. And then I found her. This beautiful redhead at the front desk who was completely indifferent to me. She barely gave me the time of day. Good morning, Mr Kinsella. No messages today, Mr Kinsella. It took me weeks to even get a smile out of her.
Olivia: I knew what I was doing. I saw the way the other girls were, fawning all over him. I knew I’d have to play it smarter to get what I wanted.
Interviewer: You married quickly; it was a whirlwind romance.
Olivia: Married in ’66, and we had Charlie in ’67. He was a honeymoon baby, nine months to the day after our wedding. We hadn’t expected to have children quite so quickly, did we, Jonny? But Charlie was such a blessing.
Jonathan: We had our second son in 1970.
Interviewer: Henry, who is, of course, dating the model Greta Ainsworth.
Jonathan: Yes, that’s it.
Olivia: We adore Greta, don’t we, darling? Brings a dash of glamour to the place, and, let me tell you, artists, especially the serious ones, absolutely love some glamour.
Interviewer: I think our viewers will be interested in what brought you to Inish . . . I’m sorry, I’m afraid I’m going to make a terrible hash of this pronunciation.
Olivia: It’s Inish-roon. I was born here. My mother was an islander, but she died when I was a baby. My father never settled after that; he was from Dublin originally, and when the war ended he brought me and my older siblings back to the city. I went to England when I was sixteen, I even changed my name – Olivia Walsh seemed far more cosmopolitan, more London than Orlaith Breathnach, I thought. And that was that. There was nothing left for me in Ireland any more. (pause) But after Charlie was born, I suppose it was only natural that I started to wonder about my roots.
Jonathan: And my great-grandfather was born in the west of Ireland, a little village in Mayo, but he went to England during the famine. I had grown up listening to stories about the Old Country, but I’d never actually been to Ireland before our first trip in ’69. I must admit, I was shocked by the place. The island didn’t have power, they used these things called tilley lamps, that’s all they had for light. And the people here were so poor, those who were left anyway. I remember one man telling me that he had forty-two first cousins living in Chicago. Forty-two! And more people emigrating every day.
Olivia: But we fell in love with it all the same. How could you not? Look at that view! Have you ever seen anything quite so spectacular in your life?
Interviewer: It’s breathtaking.
Olivia: Thank you. We came for day visits for the first few years, usually without the children, just to get a feel for the place. Jonathan lobbied a friend of his, a man who had the ear of the Irish Prime Minister, and he suggested that perhaps Inisrún could benefit from a little more attention. We waited until the place had electricity before we built the house on the far side of the island, and we came here every summer after that.
Jonathan: It was in the early nineties that I could sense things were changing for Ireland. It was like how London felt in the sixties. Like . . . youth. Or excitement, or something. I can’t explain it. Livvy is the smart one, not me. But whatever it was, I knew I wanted in. I bought a building in Dublin and a castle in Laois – it was the first luxury Kinsella Hotel and I brought American investors in on that one, the Yanks love a good castle – but Inisrún had our hearts. We wanted to do something to help the people here; we didn’t think it was right that all this new money should stay in Dublin. The islanders deserved to have a piece of the pie as well.
Interviewer: That being said, the decision to buy up the houses on the island to build the Misty Hill retreat hasn’t been welcomed by all, has it? Initially some locals referred to the area where you rehomed them as a ‘ghetto’.
Olivia: That’s ridiculous. Those old houses were decaying, and the damp, my God, I’m surprised a child survived a night there, they were like tenements. And we still paid well over market price for them. The new homes are warm and have double glazing and central heating and—
Jonathan: It’s OK, Livvy. Listen, I’m not going to lie to you. Naturally it upsets me to hear some of the islanders were dissatisfied with their new homes. But we saw what life was like here in the seventies and eighties – those people were living hand to mouth. They’d nothing, and I know what it’s like to have nothing. I think if you asked them today, their answers would be different. Things have changed here because of Misty Hill, and for the better.
Olivia: They most certainly have. Misty Hill put Inisrún on the map. Because of the centre, emigration has been almost halved; young people don’t have to go to Liverpool or Boston or wherever to find work. Families are able to stay, bring up their children here. Misty Hill has been a rebirth for the entire island.
Note: Jonathan and Olivia Kinsella declined to be interviewed for The Crowley Girl documentary.