Ronan Bennett was born on 14 January 1956 and is an Irish novelist and screenwriter.
19 Facts About Ronan Bennett
2.
Ronan Bennett was accepted for a place at Queen's University, before being arrested for suspected involvement in an IRA robbery.
3.
In 1974, when he was 19, Bennett was convicted by a no-jury Diplock court of murdering Inspector William Elliott, a 49-year-old police officer in the Royal Ulster Constabulary, during an Official IRA robbery at the Ulster Bank in The Diamond shopping area in Rathcoole, close to his home in Merville Garden Village, on 6 September 1974.
4.
Ronan Bennett's conviction was declared unsafe in 1975 and he was released from Long Kesh prison.
5.
Ronan Bennett had been writing in prison to Iris Mills in Huddersfield, to which he moved after his release from Long Kesh, becoming involved with anarchist paper Black Flag.
6.
Ronan Bennett was arrested there with Mills, a New Zealand national, and after an illegal attempt to deport them was made, they moved to Paris, then London.
7.
Ronan Bennett conducted his own defence, and he and his co-defendants were acquitted in 1979.
8.
In 1992, Ronan Bennett wrote a fictionalised account of what was known as the "Persons Unknown" Official Secrets Act trial, The Second Trial.
9.
Anarcho-punk band the Poison Girls recorded a song "Persons Unknown" and released it as a joint single with Crass to raise money for Ronan Bennett's anarchistic Wapping Autonomy Centre.
10.
Mills and Ronan Bennett found funding, then rebuilt and decorated the Centre, which did not last long, succumbing to vandalism by the punk fans it attracted.
11.
Ronan Bennett studied History at King's College London, receiving a first-class honours degree.
12.
Ronan Bennett later completed, in 1987, a doctorate on crime and law enforcement in 17th-century England, material he used in Havoc, in its Third Year.
13.
Ronan Bennett discussed the loss of his wife in a BBC Radio 3 programme, Private Passions.
14.
Since 2006 Ronan Bennett has co-hosted a regular Monday chess column with Daniel King in The Guardian, which seeks to be instructive, rather than topical.
15.
In 1990, Ronan Bennett was co-author of Stolen Years: before and after Guildford, the memoir of Paul Hill, one of the Guildford Four who were wrongfully convicted in 1975 for the Guildford and Woolwich pub bombings and imprisoned for 14 years.
16.
Ronan Bennett has written several acclaimed screenplays for film and television, among them The Hamburg Cell and the controversial Rebel Heart.
17.
Ronan Bennett contributes regularly to the British and Irish press.
18.
Ronan Bennett was the ordinary one who has grown as a leader despite everything that has been thrown at him.
19.
Ronan Bennett is asking us to join in building a society full of decency and love.