46 Facts About Brendan Behan

Brendan Francis Aidan Behan was an Irish poet, short story writer, novelist, playwright, and Irish Republican.

Brendan Behan was named by Irish Central as one of the greatest Irish writers of all time.

An Irish Republican and a volunteer in the Irish Republican Army, Behan was born in Dublin into a staunchly republican family becoming a member of the IRA's youth organization Fianna Eireann at the age of fourteen.

At age 16, Brendan Behan joined the IRA, which led to his serving time in a borstal youth prison in the United Kingdom and imprisonment in Ireland.

Subsequently released from prison as part of a general amnesty given by the Fianna Fail government in 1946, Brendan Behan moved between homes in Dublin, Kerry and Connemara, and resided in Paris for a time.

Brendan Behan briefly attempted to combat this by a dry stretch while staying at Chelsea Hotel in New York, and in 1961 was admitted to Sunnyside Private Hospital, an institution for the treatment of alcoholism in Toronto, but he turned back to alcohol and relapsed back into active alcoholism.

Brendan Behan was born in the inner city of Dublin at Holles Street Hospital on 9 February 1923 into an educated working-class family.

Brendan Behan's mother, Kathleen Behan, nee Kearney, had two sons, Sean Furlong and Rory, 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.

Brendan Behan remained politically active all her life and was a personal friend of the Irish leader Michael Collins.

Brendan Behan wrote a lament to Collins, The Laughing Boy, at the age of thirteen.

The title was from the affectionate nickname Mrs Brendan Behan gave to Collins.

Brendan Behan's brother Dominic was a songwriter, best known for the song The Patriot Game; Brendan Behan's 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 Behan was returning home with his granny and a friend from a pub.

At this stage, Brendan Behan left school at 13 to enter apprenticeship to follow in his father's and both grandfathers' footsteps as a house painter.

Brendan Behan became a member of Fianna Eireann, the boy scout group of the Anti-Treaty IRA.

Brendan Behan published his first poems and prose in the organisation's magazine, Fianna: the Voice of Young Ireland.

At 16, Brendan Behan joined the IRA and embarked on an unauthorised solo mission to England to set off a bomb at the Liverpool docks.

Brendan Behan wrote about the experience in the memoir Borstal Boy.

In 1942, during the wartime state of emergency declared by Irish Taoiseach Eamon de Valera, Brendan Behan was arrested by the Garda Siochana and put on trial for conspiracy to murder and the attempted murder of two Garda detectives, which the IRA had planned to take place during a Dublin commemoration ceremony for Theobald Wolfe Tone.

Brendan Behan was found guilty and sentenced to 14 years imprisonment.

Brendan Behan was first 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.

Brendan Behan later related his experiences there in his memoir Confessions of an Irish Rebel.

Brendan Behan learned Irish in prison and, after his release in 1946, he spent some time in the Gaeltacht areas of Galway and Kerry, where he started writing poetry in Irish.

Brendan Behan left Ireland and all its perceived social pressures to live in Paris in the early 1950s.

Brendan Behan 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.

Brendan Behan began to write for radio, and his play The Leaving Party was broadcast.

Donleavy and artist Desmond MacNamara whose bust of Brendan Behan is on display at the National Writers Museum.

Brendan Behan fell out with the spiky Kavanagh, who reportedly would visibly shudder at the mention of Brendan Behan's name and who referred to him as "evil incarnate".

Brendan Behan's fortunes changed in 1954, with the appearance of his play The Quare Fellow.

Brendan Behan generated immense publicity for The Quare Fellow as a result of a drunken appearance on the Malcolm Muggeridge TV show.

Rumours still abound that Littlewood contributed much of the text of The Quare Fellow and led to the saying, "Dylan Thomas wrote Under Milk Wood, Brendan Behan wrote under Littlewood".

The subsequent English-language version The Hostage, reflecting Brendan Behan's own translation from the Irish but much influenced by Joan Littlewood during a troubled collaboration with Brendan Behan, is a bawdy, slapstick play that adds a number of flamboyantly gay characters and bears only a limited resemblance to the original version.

In one account, an inmate strives to entice Brendan Behan into chanting political slogans with him.

Brendan Behan sends them out on a spree, ribald, flushed, and spoiling for a fight.

Brendan Behan revered the memory of Father William Doyle, a Dublin priest of the Society of Jesus, who served as military chaplain to the Royal Dublin Fusiliers as they fought in the trenches of the Western Front.

Brendan Behan expressed his affection for Father Doyle's memory in the memoir Borstal Boy.

In February 1955, Brendan Behan married horticultural illustrator for The Irish Times, Beatrice Ffrench Salkeld, daughter of the painter Cecil Ffrench Salkeld.

Various biographies have established that Brendan Behan was bisexual to some degree.

Brendan Behan was a long-term heavy drinker and developed diabetes in the early 1950s but this was not diagnosed until 1956.

Brendan Behan died on 20 March 1964 after collapsing at the Harbour Lights bar in Echlin Street, Dublin.

Brendan Behan was transferred to the Meath Hospital in central Dublin, where he died, aged 41.

Brendan Behan had a one-night stand in 1961 with Valerie Danby-Smith, who was Ernest Hemingway's personal assistant and later married his son, Dr Gregory Hemingway.

Brendan Behan died two years later, having never met his son.

Brendan Behan's work has been a significant influence in the writings of Shane MacGowan, and he is the subject of Streams of Whiskey, a song by The Pogues.

Shortly after Behan's death a student, Fred Geis, wrote the song Lament for Brendan Behan and passed it on to the Clancy Brothers, who sang it on their album Recorded Live in Ireland the same year.

Donleavy's History of The Ginger Man, Behan was instrumental in bringing Donleavy in contact with M Girodios of Olympia Press to help Donleavy's first novel, The Ginger Man, be published despite its having been ostracised by the world literature community for its "filth" and "obscenity".