An extremely rare signed letter from the first Olympic lawn tennis champion John Pius Boland (1870-1958), written inviting a colleague to dinner to co

An extremely rare signed letter from the first Olympic lawn tennis champion John Pius Boland (1870-1958), written inviting a colleague to dinner to continue debating the 'Irish Language question'; offered with a copy of 'My Mother's Knee' a book written by his daughter, Bridget Boland, in 1978 and featuring a chapter about her father (2) Boland was the first Olympic champion in lawn tennis for Great Britain and Ireland at the first modern Olympics, which took place in Athens in 1896. Boland was educated at two private Catholic schools, one Irish, the second English, and both of whose existence and evolution were influenced by John Henry (later Cardinal) Newman - the Catholic University School, Dublin, and The Oratory School, Birmingham (since re-located to near Reading) where he became head boy. His secondary education in the two schools either side of the Irish Sea helped give him the foundation and understanding to play an influential role in the politics of Great Britain and Ireland at the beginning of the 20th century, when he was a member of the Irish Parliamentary Party which pursued constitutional Home Rule.