Later this week we will be continuing with Chapter 2 of ‘The Legend of William Lamport’. In the interim, a couple of readers to the site have been in contact to ask how they could access further information regarding Lamport and his extraordinary life.
Where possible to obtain a copy, Gerard Ronan’s excellent ‘The Irish Zorro- The Extraordinary Adventures Of William Lamport (1615-1659)’, comes highly recommended.
For further historical analysis on the life of William Lamport, History Ireland published an insightful article back in 2001 as part of Early Modern History (1500-1700) entitled ‘The Man Behind The Mask of Zorro’. This article also comes with a ‘Further Reading’ list.
In terms of documentary information Newstalk’s J.J. O’Shea produced an engaging audio documentary Man and Myth which you can still listen to today as a podcast.
Across all aforementioned sources a recurring theme of connecting the life events of Lamport as inspiration for Johnston McCulley in his creation of ‘Zorro’ are implied by the authors. The merits of this statement does warrant further discussion and will serve as the subject of a future article on this site.
In the meantime, we leave you with a preview of what’s to come in our next installment of Chapter 2 with a depiction of the Jesuit College College of Back Lane in Dublin, where a young Lamport would have studied as the ‘Oath of Supremacy’ would have made Trinity College inaccessible to him. Art and colours by Cormac Hughes and Ellie Wright respectively.
The Legend of William Lamport 