Rea would later remark that his decision to marry a notorious ex-militant from the IRA had done nothing to hurt his career. ‘The people in my profession were enormously generous about it,’ he said. But inevitably, he was often questioned about his wife’s past, and when this happened, he tended to bristle. Rea wanted the press to focus exclusively on his work and not get caught up in his biography, much less the history or politics of his spouse.
