William Russell Lane-Joynt

William Russell Lane-Joynt was born in Limerick in 1855, the son of a future Lord Mayor of Dublin, and grew into a barrister, four-time revolver champion, and the man who forced Irish stamp collecting out of private drawers and into a public society. He won silver at the 1908 London Olympics while helping the Duke of Leinster build a collection so fine it still belongs to the state, and he remained president of the Irish Philatelic Society until a year before his death in Clonskeagh. A birthplace is not a gilded cage when the man leaves it with a gun in one hand and a folder of foreign stamps in the other.