24 Facts About Flann O'Brien

Brian O'Nolan, his pen name being Flann O'Brien, was an Irish civil service official, novelist, playwright and satirist, who is considered a major figure in twentieth-century Irish literature.

Flann O'Brien attended Synge Street Christian Brothers School, Dublin of which his novel The Hard Life contains a semi-autobiographical depiction.

Blackrock College where Flann O'Brien's education continued, was run by the Holy Ghost Fathers, who were considered more intellectual and less likely to use corporal punishment against their students.

Flann O'Brien was taught English by the President of the College, and future Archbishop, John Charles McQuaid.

Flann O'Brien wrote prodigiously during his years as a student at University College Dublin, which was then situated in various buildings around Dublin's south city centre.

Flann O'Brien contributed to the student magazine, called in Irish Comhthrom Feinne, under various guises, in particular the pseudonym Brother Barnabas.

Flann O'Brien, who had studied German in Dublin, may have spent at least parts of 1933 and 1934 staying in Nazi Germany, namely in Cologne and Bonn, although details are uncertain and contested.

O'Brien rose to be quite senior, serving as private secretary to Sean T O'Kelly and Sean MacEntee, a powerful political figure, both of whom almost certainly knew or guessed O'Brien was na gCopaleen.

In reality, that Brian O'Nolan was Flann O'Brien and Myles na gCopaleen was an open secret, largely disregarded by his colleagues, who found his writing very entertaining; this was a function of the makeup of the civil service, which recruited leading graduates by competitive examination.

Flann O'Brien joined the Irish civil service in 1935, working in the Department of Local Government.

Flann O'Brien was an alcoholic for much of his life and suffered from ill health in his later years.

Flann O'Brien was afflicted with cancer of the throat and died from a heart attack on the morning of 1 April 1966.

From late 1940 to early 1966, Flann O'Brien wrote short columns for The Irish Times under the title "Cruiskeen Lawn", using the moniker Myles na gCopaleen.

The letters were a hit with the readers of The Irish Times, and R M Smyllie, then editor of the newspaper invited O'Brien to contribute a column.

Flann O'Brien wrote a column titled Bones of Contention for the Nationalist and Leinster Times under the pseudonym George Knowall; those were collected in the volume Myles Away From Dublin.

Flann O'Brien was notorious for his prolific use and creation of pseudonyms for much of his writing, including short stories, essays, and letters to editors, and even perhaps novels, which has rendered the compilation of a complete bibliography of his writings an almost impossible task.

Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, whose work might be said to bear some similarities to that of Flann O'Brien, praised the book in his essay "When Fiction Lives in Fiction".

Flann O'Brien influenced the science fiction writer and conspiracy theory satirist Robert Anton Wilson, who has Flann O'Brien's character De Selby, an obscure intellectual in The Third Policeman and The Dalkey Archive, appear in his own The Widow's Son.

Flann O'Brien was known for pulling the reader's leg by concocting elaborate conspiracy theories.

Flann O'Brien has been semi-seriously referred to as a "scientific prophet" in relation to his writings on thermodynamics, quaternion theory and atomic theory.

In 2012, on the 101st anniversary of his birth, Flann O'Brien was honoured with a commemorative Google Doodle.

Flann O'Brien would have laughed at the notion of being anybody's hero.

Flann O'Brien wrote a column, "Bones of Contention", which appeared under the name George Knowall in The Nationalist and Leinster Times of Carlow between 1960 and 1966.

Since 2012 the International Flann O'Brien Society has published an open-access peer-reviewed journal, The Parish Review: Journal of Flann O'Brien Studies.