Brendan Behan, the Irish playwright and author, was born in Dublin on 9 February 1923.
He left school at the age of 13 and had many jobs. At that time, he joined the Irish Republican Army, which was outlawed.
Behan spent much of the 1940s in reform school and prison.
Having been convicted of carrying explosives in 1939 in Liverpool, he was sentenced to a "Borstal", i.e. a boys prison, for eighteen months, and there he began writing.
Later on he was sentenced to fourteen years for shooting at a policeman.
His observations of prison life became the stuff for "The Quare Fellow", a play about the hours preceding a hanging. It was produced first in the Pike Theatre in Dublin, then, in 1956, in London. "The play was a statement on the condition of the outcast and the emotions excited by barbaric revenge, rather than a piece of anti-capital-punishment propaganda" (MS Encarta).
"The Hostage" was even more successful. Set in an Irish brothel, it was staged in Dublin in 1958.
Behan's plays are marked by the use of "earthy dialogue and trenchant humour", and carried on the tradition of the urban drama created by Sean O'Casey.
His prose works include "Borstal Boy" (1958), an account of his term in the boys reform school, "Brendan Behan's Island" (1962), a collection of Irish anecdotes, "Hold Your Hour and Have Another" (1964), "The Scarperer" (1964), and "Confessions of an Irish Rebel" (1965).
Diabetes and alcohol ruined Brendan Behan's health. He died on 20 March 1964 in Dublin.
Ref.: Microsoft® Encarta® 96 Encyclopedia
