29 Facts About Francis Stuart

Henry Francis Montgomery Stuart was an Irish writer.

Francis Stuart was awarded one of the highest artistic accolades in Ireland, being elected a Saoi of Aosdana, before his death in 2000.

Francis Stuart was born in Townsville, Queensland, Australia on 29 April 1902 to Irish Protestant parents, Henry Irwin Stuart and Elizabeth Barbara Isabel Montgomery.

Francis Stuart's father was an alcoholic and killed himself when Stuart was an infant.

The widowed Elizabeth Stuart returned with her son to Ireland.

Francis Stuart had been proposed to by W B Yeats in 1917.

Francis Stuart had a brief affair with Ezra Pound prior to meeting Stuart.

Pound and Francis Stuart both believed in the primacy of the artist over the masses and were subsequently drawn to fascism; Francis Stuart to Nazi Germany and Pound to Fascist Italy.

Gonne and Francis Stuart had a baby daughter who died in infancy.

Francis Stuart was involved in gunrunning and was interned after a botched raid.

Francis Stuart's novels were successful and his writing was publicly supported by Yeats.

Yeats seemed to have had mixed feelings for Francis Stuart who was, after all, married to a woman he regarded almost as a daughter and, even, as a possible wife.

Francis Stuart threw her out of her own room with such violence that she fell on the landing half-dressed at the feet of Claud Chevasse who was staying in the house at the time.

Francis Stuart had locked himself in her room from where the flames were coming.

Francis Stuart was facilitating academic exchanges between Ireland and the Third Reich but forming connections which might be of benefit to the Abwehr.

Francis Stuart was friendly with the head of the German Foreign Office Legation in Dublin, Dr Eduard Hempel, largely as a result of Maud Gonne MacBride's rapport with him.

In July 1939, Francis Stuart returned home to Laragh and confirmed at the outbreak of war in September that he would still take the place in Berlin.

Francis Stuart was told to take a message to Abwehr HQ in Berlin.

Around August 1940, Francis Stuart was asked by Haller if he would participate in Operation Dove and he agreed, although he was later dropped in favour of Frank Ryan.

Between March 1942 and January 1944 Francis Stuart worked as part of the Redaktion-Irland team, reading radio broadcasts containing Nazi ideology and propaganda which were aimed at and heard in Ireland.

Francis Stuart was dropped from the Redaktion-Irland team in January 1944 because he objected to the anti-Soviet material that was presented to him and deemed essential by his supervisors.

Francis Stuart's passport was taken from him by the Gestapo after this event.

Francis Stuart is known to have read only one piece of what might be considered antisemitic propaganda for Redaktion-Irland: his first.

However, Francis Stuart did write the following in a 1924 Sinn Fein pamphlet :.

In 1945 Francis Stuart decided to return to Ireland with a former student, Gertrude Meissner; they were unable to do so and were arrested and detained by Allied troops.

In 1971 Francis Stuart published his best-known work, Black List Section H, an autobiographical fiction documenting his life and distinguished by a queasy sensitivity to moral complexity and moral ambiguity.

Francis Stuart resigned from Aosdana in protest, sacrificing a government stipend by doing so.

The statement from the Irish Times read out in the High Court accepted "that Mr Francis Stuart never expressed anti-Semitism in his writings or otherwise".

Francis Stuart died of natural causes on 2 February 2000 at the age of 97 in County Clare.