Brendan Behan
Brendan Behan, born in 1923, was an Irish playwright and author known for his sharp wit and tumultuous life. His works, including "The Quare Fellow" and "The Hostage," explored themes of Irish identity, politics, and social issues with dark humour and poignancy.
Behan's upbringing in a Republican family deeply influenced his writing, as did his experiences in prison for IRA activities.
Despite struggles with alcoholism and controversy, he remains celebrated for his contribution to Irish literature. His legacy lives on through his impactful plays and candid autobiographical works, solidifying him as a prominent figure in 20th-century Irish literature.
Manchester Hospitality
Behan spent a night inside Bootle Street police station after entering Britain illegally in 1947. He had been banned from the country under the Prevention of Violence Act. But on being released, during an amnesty, came to Manchester at the invitation of the local IRA cell, thereby reneging on the deal.
Trying to break a fellow republican out of Strangeways Jail, Behan was arrested by Robert Mark, then a detective constable in the Special Branch, who went on to become Commissionaire of the Metropolitan Police. In court Behan was given an extra four months on his jail sentence, despite or perhaps because of the pleas of his lawyer who kept referring to the writer as a “love choild of the Oirish revolution”.
Behan served his short prison sentence in Strangeways, Manchester after which he effectively left the IRA, though he remained great friends with the future Chief-Of-Staff Cathal Goulding.
Brendan Francis Behan (February 1923 – 20 March 1964) was an Irish poet, short story writer, novelist, playwright, and Irish Republican, an activist who wrote in both English and Irish. Behan was one of the most successful Irish dramatists of the 20th century.
Behan was born in the inner city of Dublin into an educated working class family. His father Stephen Behan, a house painter who had been active in the Irish War of Independence, read classic literature to the children at bedtime, while his mother Kathleen took them on literary tours of the city. At 14, Behan became a member of Fianna Éireann, the youth organization of the IRA; he published his first poems and prose in the organisation’s magazine Fianna: the Voice of Young Ireland.
At 16, Behan joined the IRA and embarked on an unauthorised solo mission to England to set off a bomb at the Liverpool docks. He was arrested while in possession of explosives. British prosecutors tried to persuade him to testify against his IRA superiors and offered in return to relocate him under a new name to Canada or another part of the British Commonwealth. Refusing to be turned, the 16-year-old Behan was sentenced to three years at Hollesley Bay Colony Borstal, near Woodbridge, Suffolk. He wrote about the experience in the memoir Borstal Boy.
He was later incarcerated in Mountjoy Prison in Dublin and then interned both with other IRA men and with Allied and German airmen at the Curragh Camp in County Kildare. He later related his experiences there in his memoir Confessions of an Irish Rebel. Released under a general amnesty for IRA prisoners and internees in 1946, Behan's active IRA career was largely over by the age of 23. During his incarcerations, he took it upon himself to study, and he became a fluent speaker of the Irish language. Behan moved between homes in Dublin, Kerry and Connemara and also resided in Paris for a time.
In 1954, Behan's first play, The Quare Fellow, was produced in Dublin. It was well received; however, it was the 1956 production at Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop in Stratford, London, that gained Behan a wider reputation. This was helped by a famous drunken interview on BBC television with Malcolm Muggeridge. In 1958, Behan's play in the Irish language, An Giall had its debut at Dublin's Dame Theatre. Later, The Hostage, Behan's English-language adaptation of An Giall, met with great success internationally. Borstal Boy, was published the same year and became a worldwide best-seller.
By the early 1960s, Behan reached the peak of his fame. He spent increasing amounts of time in New York City with various prominent people such as Harpo Marx and Arthur Miller and was followed by a young Bob Dylan. However, this newfound fame did nothing to aid his health or his work, with his alcoholism and diabetes medical conditions continuing to deteriorate
The public wanted the witty, iconoclastic, genial "broth of a boy", and he gave that to them in abundance, once exclaiming: "There's no bad publicity except an obituary."
He died, aged 41, in the Meath Hospital in central Dublin, and was buried in Glasnevin Cemetery where he received a Republican funeral.
En route to the graveyard, thousands lined the streets.