To get a US president's attention, sit on his clothes while he's swimming naked in a river

• Published date: 05 June 2023
• Author: Alison Healy
• Publication title: Irish Times: Web Edition Articles (Dublin, Ireland)

He had a habit of swimming in Washington's Potomac river. In fairness to him, bathing suits were not yet commonplace, so swimming in the nip wasn't a weird peccadillo

According to folklore, the pioneering journalist sought him out early one morning and fired the questions at him as he remained in the water, with only his head on view.

The story may be apocryphal but interviewing the president while he was skinny dipping does sound like something Anne Royall would relish. Her life consisted of one good story after another.

She was said to be one of the first female journalists in Washington and she talked to every US president in her lifetime, from George Washington onwards. How she arrived in Washington is a story in itself. She was born Anne Newport, in Maryland in 1769 and had Irish ancestry. A 1908 biography – The Life and Times of Anne Royall – quotes a toast she gave which she said came from her Irish ancestors. It went: Health to the sick, wealth to the brave, a husband to the widow and freedom to the slave. It also mentioned her Irish aunt Molly Carrahan and spoke about books she read as a child, such as Paddy from Cork.

After her father died, she and her mother worked as servants in the home of Captain William Royall who fought in the American Revolution. He noticed her voracious appetite for books and gave her access to his vast library. They later married, scandalising his family because of her lowly status and the age difference of more than 20 years.

After he died and left his estate to her, his nephew challenged the will. It was eventually overturned, leaving her almost penniless. She fought for, and won a pension, as he was a war veteran, but the relatives also came after that and won a sizeable chunk of it.

She had moved to Washington to petition Congress for the pension, which is where she first met John Quincy Adams. In her 50s she became a travel writer and a campaigning journalist, known for outspoken views and fearless criticism of politicians. John Quincy Adams admiringly described her as the "terror of politicians" and a "virago errant in enchanted armor" while the Washington Post said her pen was as "venomous as a rattlesnake's fangs".

She also had a passion for keeping religion out of state affairs. After she complained about a...