United States Ambassador to Ireland - Nomination of William V. Shannon

The President today announced that he will nominate William V. Shannon, of Washington, D.C., to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States to Ireland. Shannon is on the editorial board of the New York Times.

He was born August 24, 1927, in Worcester, Mass. He received an A.B. from Clark University in 1947 and an M.A. from Harvard University in 1948.

Shannon worked as a free-lance writer in Washington from 1949 to 1951. From 1951 to 1964, he was a Washington correspondent and columnist for the New York Post, and since 1964 he has been on the editorial board of the New York Times.

Shannon is the author of "The American Irish" (1964), "The Heir Apparent" (1967), and "They Could Not Trust the King" (1974), and coauthor of "The Truman Merry-Go-Round" (1950). He is also the author of numerous articles.

Shannon is on the board of directors of the American Irish Foundation. In 1975 he received the Gold Medal of the Eire Society of Boston for service to literature. He has been an associate fellow of Morse College, Yale University, since 1966, and in 1961--62 was fellow-in-residence at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in Santa Barbara, Calif.