McDonagh graduated in Classics from Balliol College , Oxford , where in 1972 he was elected President of the Oxford Union . In a harbinger of his future diplomatic career , during his presidency of the Union , in November 1972 , he invited the Irish Prime Minister , Taoiseach Jack Lynch , to debate at the Union . This was in the period after Bloody Sunday ( January 1972 ) when talks were taking place between the Irish and British which eventually culminated in the Sunningdale Agreement . On the day after the debate Lynch had a working dinner with Ted Heath , at 10 Downing Street . McDonagh 's father was at the time head of the Anglo-Irish division at the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs and was among the officials who accompanied Lynch to Britain on that occasion
Bloody Sunday
Bloody Sunday (1972)
Philip McDonagh