Harry Potter Star Wanted To Be Buried Here, He Even Bought A Plot
The three sons of Richard Harris are to take his body back home to be buried in Limerick. Jamie, Jared and Damian, his children by his first wife, Elizabeth Rees-Williams, were at Harris’s bedside when he died on Friday, Vanessa Thorpe writes.
The actor wanted to be buried at Mount Saint Lawrence in his native Limerick and bought a plot for the purpose. The funeral is expected to be held next week.
Harris was born on 1 October, 1930, the fifth of eight children in a middle-class Roman Catholic family. His father, Ivan, was a flour mill owner and, during childhood, Harris acquired a lifelong love of poetry and rugby, playing as a forward for his province, Munster. At 19, a chance to play for Ireland was scuppered by a long bout of tuberculosis. For more than two years he was confined to bed and took the opportunity to read, racing through Joyce, Beckett, DH Lawrence, Dylan Thomas and Yeats.
’Catching TB was the luckiest thing that ever happened to me,’ he said later. ’It wa