Brendan Francis Aidan BehanBrendan Behan: A Life, Michael O'Sullivan, pg 23 (christened Francis Behan)Brendan Behan: A Life, Michael O'Sullivan, pg xi ( ; ; 9 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. His widely acknowledged alcohol dependence, despite attempts to treat it, impacted his creative capacities and contributed to health and social problems which curtailed his artistic output and finally his life. He is widely regarded as one of Ireland's greatest writers.
An Irish Republican and a volunteer in the Irish Republican Army (IRA), Behan was born in Dublin into a staunchly republican family, becoming a member of the IRA's youth organization Fianna Éireann at the age of fourteen. There was also a strong emphasis on Irish history and culture in his home, which meant he was steeped in literature and patriotic ballads from an early age. At the age of 16, Behan joined the IRA, which led to his serving time in a borstal youth prison in the United Kingdom and imprisonment in Ireland. During this time, he took it upon himself to study and became a fluent speaker of the Irish language. Subsequently released from prison as part of a general amnesty given by the Fianna Fáil government in 1946, 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 Damer Theatre. Later, The Hostage, Behan's English-language adaptation of An Giall, met with great success internationally. Behan's autobiographical novel, 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, famously declaring, "To America, my new found land: The man that hates you hates the human race." By this point, Behan began spending time 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 alcohol dependence and diabetic conditions continuing to deteriorate. Brendan Behan's New York and Confessions of an Irish Rebel received little praise. He briefly attempted to combat this by a dry stretch while staying at the Chelsea Hotel in New York, and in 1961 was admitted to Sunnyside Private Hospital, an institution for the treatment of alcohol dependence in Toronto, but he once again turned back to alcohol and relapsed back into active alcohol use.
Early life
Behan was born in the inner city of Dublin at Holles Street Hospital on 9 February 1923 into an educated working-class family.Joan Littlewood, 'Behan, (Francis) Brendan (1923–1964)’, Brendan Behan . Oxford Dictionary of National Biography on line ed., Oxford University Press, 2004. Retrieved 14 June 2014
His mother, Kathleen Behan, née Kearney, had two sons, Sean Furlong and Rory (Roger Casement Furlong), from her first marriage to compositor Jack Furlong; after Brendan was born she had three more sons and a daughter: Seamus, Brian, Dominic and Carmel.Dictionary of Irish Biography, Behan, Kathleen https://www.dib.ie/biography/behan-kathleen-a0542
They first lived in a house on Russell Street near Mountjoy Square owned by his grandmother, Christine English, who owned a number of properties in the area. Brendan's father Stephen Behan, a house painter who had fought in the War of Independence, read classic literature to the children at bedtime including the works of Zola, Galsworthy, and Maupassant; their mother Kathleen took them on literary tours of the city. She remained politically active all her life and was a personal friend of the Irish leader Michael Collins. Kathleen published her autobiography, Mother of All The Behans, a collaboration with her son Brian, in 1984.
Brendan Behan wrote a lament to Collins, "The Laughing Boy", at the age of thirteen. The title was from the affectionate nickname Mrs Behan gave to Collins.
Behan's uncle Peadar Kearney wrote "The Soldier's Song", which became the Irish national anthem Amhrán na bhFiann when translated into Irish. His brother Dominic was also a songwriter, best known for the song "The Patriot Game";Patriot Game, lyrics . Brobdingnagian Bards. Retrieved 14 June 2014 His brother Brian was a prominent radical political activist and public speaker, actor, author, and playwright.
Biographer Ulick O'Connor wrote that one day, aged eight, Brendan was returning home with his granny and a friend from a pub. A passer-by remarked, "Oh, my! Isn't it terrible, ma'am, to see such a beautiful child deformed?" "How dare you", joked his granny. "He's not deformed; he's just drunk!"
In 1937, the Behan family moved to a newly-built local council housing scheme in Kildare Road, Crumlin, then seen by Dubliners as the countryside – Stephen muttered that the working classes were being sent "To Hell or to Kimmage" a parody of Oliver Cromwell's demand that the Irish be sent "To Hell or to Connacht". At this stage, Behan left school at 13 to enter an apprenticeship to follow in his father's and both grandfathers' footsteps as a house painter.
IRA activities Behan became a member of Fianna Éireann, the boy scout group of the Anti-Treaty IRA. He published his first poems and prose in the organisation's magazine, Fianna: the Voice of Young Ireland. In 1931 he also became the youngest contributor to be published in The Irish Press with his poem "Reply of Young Boy to Pro-English verses".
At 16, Behan joined the IRA and embarked on an unauthorised solo mission to England to set off a bomb at Cammell Laird shipyard. 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 distant part of the British Commonwealth.
Refusing to be turned, the 16-year-old Behan was sentenced to three years in a borstal (Hollesley Bay, once under the care of Cyril Joyce) and did not return to Ireland until 1941. He wrote about the experience in the memoir Borstal Boy.
In 1942, during the wartime state of emergency declared by Irish Taoiseach Éamon de Valera, Behan was arrested by the Garda Síochána following a protest against the execution of IRA man George Plant Later that same year Behan was arrested at another commemoration, which the IRA had planned to take place during a Dublin commemoration ceremony for Theobald Wolfe Tone. When the group of IRA men were confronted by the police, one member pointed his revolver at them but did not fire. Behan urged him to "use it, use it"; when no shot was fired, Behan shouted: "Give it to me and I will shoot the bastards". When Behan received the gun he fired two shots at police and escaped the scene but was later arrested (10 April 1942). He was put on trial for conspiracy to murder and the attempted murder of two Garda detectives, Behan was found guilty and sentenced to 14 years' imprisonment.
He was first incarcerated in Mountjoy Prison in Dublin, where he sketched out his play The Quare Fellow, based on a fellow prisoner.Thorne, p. 375 In June 1944, Behan was 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. Aside from a short prison sentence in 1947 for trying to break an imprisoned IRA man out of prison in Manchester, Behan effectively left the organisation but remained friends with the IRA's long-term Chief of Staff Cathal Goulding.A tribute to The Lost People of Arlington House, The National Archives, London 2004
Writer Behan's prison experiences were central to his writing career. In Mountjoy, he wrote his first play, The Rent Woman, act one of which was recently discovered in the archives of the National Library of Ireland, along with acts 2 and 3 of an Irish language version of the play, An bhean ciosa the Irish for Rent Woman. It was here he also began to write short stories and other prose. It was a literary magazine called Envoy (A Review of Literature and Art), founded by John Ryan, that first published Behan's short stories and his first poem. Some of his early work was also published in The Bell, the leading Irish literary magazine of the time. He learned Irish in prison and began writing plays. In late 2024 Dublin playwright Jimmy Murphy discovered act 1 of a lost first play by Behan, The Rent Woman in the Archives of the National Library of Ireland, alongside Behan's handwritten acts 2 and 3 of a play in Irish called An Bean Ciósa, a direct translation of The Rent Woman. After his release in 1946, he spent some time in the Gaeltacht areas of counties Galway and Kerry, where he started writing poetry in Irish.
During this period he was employed by the Commissioners of Irish Lights, where the lighthouse keeper of Saint John's Point, County Down, recommending his dismissal, described him as "the worst specimen" he had met in 30 years of service, adding that he showed "careless indifference" and "no respect for property".
He left Ireland and all its perceived social pressures to live in Paris in the early 1950s. There, he felt he could lose himself and release the artist within. Although he still drank heavily, he managed to earn a living, supposedly by writing pornography. He returned to Dublin and began to write seriously, and to be published in serious papers such as The Irish Times, for which he wrote In 1953, drawing on his extensive knowledge of criminal activity in Dublin and Paris, he wrote a serial that was later published as The Scarperer.
Throughout the rest of his writing career, he would rise at seven in the morning and work until noon, when the pubs opened. He began to write for radio, and his play The Leaving Party was broadcast. Literary Ireland in the 1950s was a place where people drank. Behan cultivated a reputation as carouser-in-chief and swayed shoulder-to-shoulder with other literati of the day who used the pub McDaid's as their base: Flann O'Brien, Patrick Kavanagh, Patrick Swift, Anthony Cronin, John Jordan, J. P. Donleavy and artist Desmond MacNamara whose bust of Behan is on display at the National Writers Museum. Behan fell out with the spiky Kavanagh, who reportedly would visibly shudder at the mention of Behan's name and who referred to him as "evil incarnate".