believe that it is essential for progress that we should lose our heritage" While at one time member and secretary of the London Sinn Féin office (Roger Casement Cumann, 1935), and informed by a pride of country and place, Hayes-McCoy's professional and private outlook were marked by a distrust of nationalism or of any antagonising national agendas compromising genuine scholarship. In a paper drafted on tendencies in modern historical studies, he criticised the two historiographical extremes, each to be avoided, each unfortunately characteristic of the moment – extreme de-bunking and extreme 'adding for effect'. 'A history is a record of fact; to add pseudo-facts is as grave a sin as to leave out real facts that may change the colour of the whole'. Hayes-McCoy's abiding pastime was drawing. Among his papers in the James Hardiman Library, NUI Galway are c. 40 items with predominantly maritime subjects, and he had a special regard for the history of ships, and a romantic liking of the sea. He also had a lifelong interest in Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Walter Scott, and their works, and in the Pre-Raphaelite movement. G.A.Hayes-McCoy's middle age was marked by intermittent ill health. He died on 27 November 1975 in his room at the Great Southern Hotel, Eyre Square, Galway. Hayes-McCoy's papers are held at the James Hardiman Library, National University of Ireland, Galway. This text has been abstracted, with permission, from the biographical information provided on him by the library. Publications (selected) 1937: Scots Mercenary Forces in Ireland, 1565–1603, reprinted 1996 1942: Index to "The Compossicion Booke of Conought 1585" 1959: Sixteenth Century Irish Swords in the National Museum of Ireland ' 1963: Historical Studies IV: papers read before the Fifth Irish Conference of Historians (editor) 1964: The Irish at War1964: Ulster and Other Irish Maps, c. 1600.1965: Captain Myles Walter Keogh, United States Army 1840–1876 (O'Donnell lecture) 1969: Irish Battles: a military history of Ireland, reprinted 1990 1979: A History of Irish Flags from Earliest Times (posthumous) unknownThe Red Coat and the GreenEssays in Commemoration – 1798'' (contributor) References 1911 births 1975 deaths Alumni of the University of Galway 20th-century Irish historians Academics of the University of Galway