Irish author noted for his powerful political views and earthy satire. While not in jail or in pubs, Behan worked in odd jobs and wrote plays and stories that depicted colorfully the life of the ordinary working men. Several of his books were banned in Ireland.

Brendan Behan was born in Dublin and lived his childhood in the slums of the city. His family on both sides was traditionally anti-British and because of involvement in the Irish uprising of 1916-1922 his father was in a British compund at Behan's birth. He attended Catholic schools and left school at the age of 14, and worked as house painter. From the age of nine he hd served in the Fianna, Eireann, a youth organization connected with the IRA, and in the late 1930s he was IRA's messenger boy.

In 1939 Behan was arrested in England on a sabotage mission and sentenced to three years in Borstal in a reform school for attempting to blow up a battleship in Liverpool harbour.

After release Behan returned to Ireland, but in 1942 he was sentenced to 14 years for the attempted murder of two detectives. He served at Mountjoy Prison and at the Curragh Military Camp. In 1946 he was released under a general amnesty. He was in prison again in Mancester in 1947, serving a short term for allegedly helping an IRA prisoner to escape. In 1952 he was deported to France. Later he lived in Paris and Dublin, writing for Radio Telefis Éireann and for the Irish Press.

During his career as a journalist Behan was also intermittently on ships. He become a certified seaman in 1949. Behan's first play, THE QUARE FELLOW, based on his prison experiences, was presented at an avant-garde club in 1956 and gaind critical success. His other plays include THE HOSTAGE, written in Gaelic and set in a disreputable Dublin lodging house, owned by a former IRA commander, and THE BIG HOUSE (1957). In his dramas Behan used song and dance and direct addresses to the audience, which were typical of the style of Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop, which staged several of his works. Behan's best-known novel, BORSTAL BOY (1958), draw its material from his experiences from the Liverpool jail and Borstal school.

Lifelong battle with alcoholism ended his career in 1964, at the age of 41.

For further reading: Beckett and Behan by A. Simpson (1962);: My Brother Behan by D. Behan (1964); Brendan Behan by R. Jeffs (1965); Brendan Behan by T.E. Boyle (1969); Brendan by U. O'Connor (1970); The Major Works of Breandan Behan by P. Gerdes (1973); Brendan Behan by R. Porter (1973); My life with Brendan by Beatrice Brendan (1974); The Writings of Brendan Behan by C. Kearney (1977); McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of World Drama, ed. by Stanley Hochman (1984); Sayings of Brendan Behan (1997, paperback)

Behan's family: his uncle Peader Kearney was the author of the Irish national anathem, 'Soldier's Song'. Another uncle, P.J. Bourke, managed the Queens Theatre in Dublin, and one of Bourke's sons was the dramatist Seamus de Burca, whose English name is James Bourke. In 1955 Behan married Beatrice ffrench-Salked, a painter and the daughter of a noted Dublin artist.

See other writers born in Dublin: William Butler Yeats, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett

NOTE: St Brendan (484-577), abbott and traveller, founded monasteries in Ireland and Scotland. The Latin Navigation of St Brendan (c.1050) depicts his legendary voyage to Hebrides and the Northern Isles, or even Iceland

Selected works:

• THE QUARE FELLOW, 1954
• THE BIG HOUSE, 1957
• THE HOSTAGE / AN GAILL, 1958
• BORSTAL BOY, 1958
• BRENDAN BEHAN'S ISLAND, 1962 (illustrated by Paul Hogarth)
• HOLD YOUR HOUR AND HAVE ANOTHER, 1963 (illust. by Beatrice ffrench-Salkeld)
• THE SCARPERER, 1964
• BRENDAN BEHAN'S NEW YORK, 1964
• TWO PLAYS BY BRENDAN BEHAN, 1964
• RICHARD'S CORK LEG, 1965 (play, unfinished)
• CONFESSIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL, 1965
• A GARDEN PARTY, 1967
• MOVING OUT, 1967
• TWO SHORT PLAYS, 1967

Compiled by Kuusankoski Public Library, Finland (© 1997) and René Märtin (© 1998-2001).