Brendan Behan: A Life

Brendan Behan was already a legend of the literary world when he died in 1964 at the age of forty-one. Born in Dublin in 1923 into a highly talented family forced by unusual circumstances into tenement living, his mother's Irish republican idealism and his father's literary interests were defining i [...]
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Brendan Behan was already a legend of the literary world when he died in 1964 at the age of forty-one. Born in Dublin in 1923 into a highly talented family forced by unusual circumstances into tenement living, his mother's Irish republican idealism and his father's literary interests were defining influences on the young Brendan. At the age of sixteen, he was arrested for possession of explosives in Liverpool during an IRA bombing campaign and sent to a British borstal (boys' reformatory). Much of his early life was spent in jail, and these experiences would shape his literary genius. In such classic works as the autobiographical Borstal Boy and The Quare Fellow, his prison drama which led Irish critics in 1958 to hail him as the new O'Casey, he continually explored the theme of personal liberation within the confines of the human condition. Michael O'Sullivan is the first biographer to have access to prison documentation hitherto buried in confidential files. He has extensively interviewed Behan's widow Beatrice, family members, friends, fellow writers, and Behan's editors and producers. Portraying the man and the artist behind the legend, and sensitively exploring Behan's sexuality, which holds many clues to his contradictory life, O'Sullivan reveals the complex and unique humanity of this great Irish writer.