Lyra McKee – A Tribute

I can think of no more fitting tribute to Lyra McKee than her own words below, describing what was essentially her journalistic credo, written to me not long after we had first made contact in late 2012.

Separated by some 3,000 miles, me in New York, she in Belfast, we met via email and in one of her first messages she set out her trenchant views on the state of journalism in Northern Ireland.

Journalism was in Lyra’s DNA. She lived and breathed it and I have no doubt that had she been spared, Lyra would have developed into one of Ireland’s finest writers and most principled of journalists. She was already the sweetest and most generous of human beings.

Ireland is poorer for her loss. A curse on the hand that pulled the trigger that killed her.