Brendan Behan

Introduced by Patrick Lonergan, The Methuen Drama Anthology of Irish Plays brings together five major works from the Irish dramatic canon of the last sixty years in one outstanding collection. Behan's The Hostage, depicting the capture and death of a British soldier by the IRA, was first produced by Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop in 1958 and was declared 'a masterpiece' by The Times. Murphy's Bailegangaire (1985) portrays a senile old woman's recitation of an epic tale to her two granddaughters who struggle to free themselves from her and exorcise the past. Reid's The Belle of the Belfast City, winner of the George Devine Award in 1986, examines the tensions present in three generations of women in a Belfast-Protestant family during the week of an anti-Anglo-Irish rally. Sebastian Barry's The Steward of Christendom won the London Critics' Circle Award for Best Play 1995 and was heralded by the Guardian as 'an authentic masterpiece'. McDonagh's 1996 play The Cripple of Inishmaan is a strange comic tale in the great tradition of Irish storytelling. McDonagh was awarded the Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Playwright.

Brendan Behan wrote over one hundred articles for Irish newspapers between 1951 and 1956 as he rose to international fame, with most of them written in a weekly column in the Irish Press. The articles reveal a serious writer capable of great comic set pieces and amusing yarns as well as thoughtful reflections on cultural and historical issues. They reflect his passion for working-class Dublin life and the history and folklore of the city, as well as his travels in Ireland and Europe. This edition gathers all the articles and essays that Behan published in newspapers from 1951 to his death in 1964. Selections of Behan’s articles have been published since his death (Hold Your Hour and Have Another, 1965; After the Wake, 1981; The Dubbalin Man, 1997). However, there has been no complete edition of Behan’s prose, and no edition has provided a detailed biographical and literary introduction, explanatory notes and suggestions for further reading. This volume is publishing during the centenary celebrations of Behan’s birth in 2023, with his birthday being 9 February.

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Brendan Behan’s genius was to strike a chord between critic and common man. When he died, at the age of 41, he was arguably the most celebrated Irish writer of the twentieth century. After the Wake is a collection of seven prose works and a series of articles. It includes all that exists of an unfinished novel, ‘The Catacombs’, and pieces together items whose comic and fanciful accounts evoke Flann O’Brien. Also featured are works of acknowledged excellence, ‘The Confirmation Suit’ and ‘A Woman of No Standing’. This writing bears all the hallmarks of the author’s talent – an ability to bring characters to life quickly and unforgettably, a sharp ear for dialogue and dialect, and a natural vocation for story-telling. This diverse collection is a delightful and entertaining windfall from one of Ireland's most colourful writers. An essential complement to Behan's master works.

Includes Behan's complete dramatic works in English, three-full length plays and three one-act plays, with biographical details on Behan and the Irish Republican Movement

A critical study of author Brendan Behan and his work, through collected letters, correspondence, material from previous publications and personal reminiscences. E. H. Mikhail has published work on other literary figures including "James Joyce: Interviews and Recollections".

'I have him bitched, balloxed and bewildered, for there's a system and a science in taking the piss out of a screw and I'm a well-trained man at it.' So writes Brendan Behan, poet, writer and literary legend, of the episode that coloured his life.

The immigration man read my deportation order, looked at it and handed it back to me. Not only is it the last instalment of a unique and unorthodox autobiography, but of a unique and unorthodox life that was as touched with genius as it was with doom.

This volume contains everything Brendan Behan wrote in dramatic form in English Contains the three famous full-length plays: The Quare Fellow, set in an Irish prison ("In Brendan Behan's tremendous new play language is out on a spree, ribald, dauntless and spoiling for a fight ...with superb dramatic tact, the tragedy is concealed beneath layer after layer of rough comedy" Observer); The Hostage, set in a Dublin lodging-house of doubtful repute where a young English soldier is being kept prisoner, "shouts, sings, thunders and stamps with life...a masterpiece" (The Times); and Richard's Cork Leg, set in a graveyard, "a joyous celebration of life" (Guardian). The volume also contains three one-act plays, originally written for radio and all intensely autobiographical, Moving Out, A Garden Party and The Big House.

An essential text in the development of modern British drama First staged by Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop company at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, London, in 1958, The Hostage is a play about a Cockney soldier held as a hostage in a Dublin lodging house in exchange for an IRA man who is to be hanged in Belfast. Civic Guards accidentally shoot him in a raid on the house. It is a witty and often profound comment on Anglo-Irish relationships and on the Irish themselves. This is Behan's best-known and most popular play and a classic of the modern stage. A magnificent entertainment which "crowds in tragedy and comedy, bitterness and love, caricature and portrayal, ribaldry and eloquence, patriotism and cynicism..." (Harold Hobson, The Times)