His mother was Gertrude Nowell Robinson, the 18-year-old daughter of a Blackpool pharmacist who had been sent to live with relatives to conceal her son's illegitimate birth.

Kenneally subsequently understood that his mother, who became a dance hostess, and the female friend with whom she lived in Birmingham were "fairly high-class whores".

He was remembered in Winston Churchill's famous broadcast speech on 13 May 1945 "Five years of War",[4] as having defended Ireland's honour:"When I think of these days I think also of other episodes and personalities.

Reflecting on his heroic actions in Tunisia during an interview some years after the war's end, Kenneally said that he charged the Germans only because of "a strange don't-give-a-damn feeling" which had suddenly possessed him.

[6] He briefly appeared in the news again in 2000 when he published his autobiography and wrote to the Daily Telegraph rebuking Peter Mandelson for calling the Irish Guards "chinless wonders".