Search for information on Dolours Price and one detail is conspicuously missing from every profile page. A number for her height. Dozens of biography style sites promise it in their title, then quietly admit further down the page that the figure isn’t available. What they rarely explain is why, or what actually replaces it if you keep reading.
There is no verified height for her in the Dictionary of Irish Biography, in Wikipedia’s infobox, or in any court transcript, prison record, or interview she gave before her death in 2013. That gap exists because Price was never a public figure whose physical measurements were part of the story. She was an IRA volunteer, a hunger striker, and later one of the most outspoken critics of the Good Friday Agreement. The paper trail she left behind is court records, prison files and taped confessions.
Why This Question Keeps Getting Asked
Curiosity about someone’s height usually comes from one of two places. Either they’re known for a physical trait, or their name has resurfaced in the news and people start typing every basic question that comes to mind.
Price falls into the second category. Interest in her keeps circling back because of:
- The ongoing legal and political fallout from the Boston College oral history recordings
- Continued reporting on the unsolved elements of Jean McConville’s murder
- Patrick Radden Keefe’s book “Say Nothing” and its television adaptation
- Her marriage to actor Stephen Rea, whose height, 5 feet 10 and a half inches according to his official IMDb profile, is publicly listed in a way hers never was
That last point explains a fair amount of the confusion. When one half of a couple has documented stats and the other doesn’t, comparison style search queries get generated automatically, and thin content sites rush to fill the gap with numbers nobody can actually source.
What Is Documented About Dolours Price
| Detail | Verified Information |
|---|---|
| Born | 16 December 1950, Belfast |
| Died | 23 January 2013, Malahide, County Dublin |
| Height | Not publicly documented |
| Hair colour | Red |
| Known for | Provisional IRA volunteer, later a political critic and writer |
| Spouse | Actor Stephen Rea, married 1983, divorced 2003 |
Republican politics ran through both sides of her family. Her father Albert had already served time for IRA activity dating back to the 1938 bombing campaign in England. Her mother Christina belonged to Cumann na mBan, the republican women’s organisation. An aunt who lived with the family had lost both hands and her eyesight years earlier while handling IRA explosives.
Price didn’t start out on the militant end of the movement. In the late 1960s, she and her younger sister Marian took part in civil rights marches. One of these, the Belfast to Derry march, ended in the Burntollet Bridge attack in January 1969. That event pushed many young republicans, Price among them, toward the Provisional IRA the following year.
By March 1973, Price was leading a unit that placed car bombs outside London’s Old Bailey courthouse and Scotland Yard. Two of the four devices exploded, injuring more than 200 people, and the blasts are believed to have contributed to one further death from a heart attack. She and her sister were arrested at the airport as they tried to fly back to Ireland. Both were convicted at Winchester Castle on 14 November 1973, originally receiving life sentences that were later reduced to 20 years.
In custody, the sisters went on a hunger strike lasting 208 days, during which prison authorities force fed them for 165 of those days. The ordeal left Price with anorexia nervosa, a diagnosis later cited as the reason for her early release. She received the Royal Prerogative of Mercy in 1980 and was freed on humanitarian grounds in 1981.
The Boston College Interviews
Years after her release, Price took part in what became known as the Belfast Project. This was an oral history archive run through Boston College, in which former paramilitaries recorded their accounts on the understanding that the material would stay sealed until they died. In her interviews and in later press conversations, Price said Gerry Adams had commanded her IRA unit and linked him directly to the abduction and killing of Jean McConville, a widowed mother of ten murdered by the IRA in 1972.
Adams has consistently denied ever belonging to the IRA and rejected any role in McConville’s death. Parts of the Boston College recordings were eventually handed over to police in Northern Ireland following a lengthy legal battle between the university and British authorities. The Boston Globe and RTE both covered that dispute in detail at the time.
Her Later Years
Price spent much of her later life arguing that Sinn Fein had abandoned the cause she had nearly died for by signing the Good Friday Agreement. She worked briefly as a journalist in Dublin and wrote about her prison experience. She remained publicly critical of her former party until her death in January 2013, which a coroner linked to a combination of prescribed sedatives and antidepressants.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is there a confirmed height for Dolours Price anywhere?
No credible source lists one. Treat any page that states an exact figure in feet and inches without a citation as an unverified guess.
How tall was Stephen Rea, her former husband?
His official IMDb profile lists him at 5 feet 10 and a half inches, one of the few documented physical details connected to either person in that marriage.
Was Price actually released in 1980 or 1981?
Both years appear because two separate steps were involved. She received the Royal Prerogative of Mercy in 1980, and the release itself took effect in 1981, after her medical condition was reviewed.
What is the most reliable place to read her full story?
Patrick Radden Keefe’s book “Say Nothing,” the Dictionary of Irish Biography entry on Price, and contemporaneous reporting from the Boston Globe and RTE are good starting points. Each draws on primary material such as court records, interview transcripts and contemporary news coverage.
