 13:30, Monday, May 12, 2008 (in Ireland)
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Brendan Behan Biography
His play, "The Quare Fellow" received immediate recognition when it first appeared in the tiny Pike Theatre in Dublin. It was late staged by Joan Littlewod in London and Brendan became famous. He published stories and poems in The Irish Times and The Irish Press, spent time in France writing "pornography". Due to his fondness of the drink he unfortunately produced a very small body of work and he became well-known in later years for his drunken performances at productions of his own plays, and during television interviews. By 1963 Behan had developed diabetes, and this, combined with his refusal to stop drinking, contributed to his death. Brendan died at the Meath Hospital on March 20th, 1964, just months after his wife Beatrice had given birth to their first child, a daughter, Blanaid Orla Marghead Behan. Rene MacColl of the Daily Express wrote of him: "Too young to die, but too drunk to live". [ Send a Brendan Behan e-Postcard ] [ Literary Dublin Main Page ] [ DublinTourist.com ] Quotes: "One drink is too many for me and a thousand not enough." "The English and Americans dislike only some Irish--the same Irish that the Irish themselves detest, Irish writers--the ones that think." "I am a daylight atheist." "When I came back to Dublin I was courtmartialled in my absence and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence." "All publicity is good, except an obituary notice." "Critics are like eunuchs in a harem: they know how it's done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." "Pound notes are the best religion in the world." "Other people have a nationality. The Irish and the Jews have a psychosis." | |||
Brendan Behan (1923-1964) was born in the Holles Street Hospital in Dublin. Before
his becoming a writer he had many different jobs, the most well-known of these
being his career as a house-painter. At the age of sixteen he was arrested
in Liverpool, England while carrying explosives for the I.R.A. and sentenced
to go to "Borstal" (a boys prison) for eighteen months, an experience
that would form the basis of his novel "Borstal Boy". After his
release he re-joined the Irish Republican Army and was again arrested, receiving
a fourteen year sentence for shooting at a policeman. He served only four years.
