Brendan Francis Aidan Behan (also known as Francis Behan) (pronounced BEE-ən; Irish: Breandán Ó Beacháin; born February 9, 1923; died March 20, 1964) was an Irish poet, short story writer, novelist, playwright, and Irish Republican. He was an activist who wrote in both English and Irish. His long-term struggle with alcohol, even after attempts to treat it, affected his ability to create and caused health and social problems that limited his work and eventually led to his death. He is widely considered one of Ireland’s most important writers.
As an Irish Republican and member of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), Behan was born in Dublin to a family that strongly supported Irish independence. At age 14, he joined the IRA’s youth group, Fianna Éireann. His home life emphasized Irish history and culture, so he was exposed to literature and patriotic songs from an early age. At 16, he joined the IRA, which led to his imprisonment in a youth prison in the United Kingdom and later in Ireland. During this time, he studied and became fluent in the Irish language. In 1946, he was released from prison as part of a general amnesty by the Fianna Fáil government. Afterward, he lived in Dublin, Kerry, Connemara, and briefly in Paris.
In 1954, Behan’s first play, The Quare Fellow, was performed in Dublin and received good reviews. However, his reputation grew after a 1956 production of the play at Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop in London. This was helped by a famous television interview with Malcolm Muggeridge, during which Behan was very drunk. In 1958, his Irish-language play An Giall premiered in Dublin. Later, The Hostage, an English-language version of An Giall, became successful worldwide. That same year, his autobiography Borstal Boy was published and became a global bestseller.
By the early 1960s, Behan was very famous. He spent more time in New York City, where he once said, “To America, my new found land: The man that hates you hates the human race.” At this time, he met famous people like Harpo Marx and Arthur Miller, and a young Bob Dylan followed him. However, his fame did not improve his health or his work. His alcohol use and diabetes worsened. His books Brendan Behan’s New York and Confessions of an Irish Rebel received little praise. In 1961, he tried to stop drinking while staying at the Chelsea Hotel in New York but later relapsed. He was admitted to Sunnyside Private Hospital in Toronto, a facility for treating alcohol dependence, but returned to drinking.
Early life
Behan was born on February 9, 1923, in Dublin's inner city at Holles Street Hospital. He was part of an educated working-class family.
His mother, Kathleen Behan (born Kearney), had two sons, Sean Furlong and Rory (Roger Casement Furlong), from her first marriage to Jack Furlong, a printer. After Brendan was born, she had three more sons and a daughter: Seamus, Brian, Dominic, and Carmel.
The family first lived in a house on Russell Street near Mountjoy Square, owned by Brendan’s grandmother, Christine English, who owned several properties in the area. Brendan’s father, Stephen Behan, was a house painter who had fought in the War of Independence. He read classic literature to his children at bedtime, including works by Zola, Galsworthy, and Maupassant. His mother, Kathleen, took the children on literary tours of the city. She remained politically active throughout her life and was a close friend of Irish leader Michael Collins. Kathleen wrote an autobiography titled Mother of All The Behans, which she co-authored with her son Brian, and it was published in 1984.
At age 13, Brendan wrote a poem titled "The Laughing Boy" to honor Michael Collins. The title came from the nickname Mrs. Behan used for Collins.
Behan’s uncle, Peadar Kearney, wrote the song "The Soldier’s Song," which became Ireland’s national anthem, Amhrán na bhFiann, when translated into Irish. His brother Dominic was also a songwriter, best known for the song "The Patriot Game." His brother Brian was a well-known radical political activist, public speaker, actor, author, and playwright.
Biographer Ulick O’Connor wrote that when Brendan was eight, he was walking home with his grandmother and a friend from a pub. A passerby said, "Oh, my! Isn’t it terrible, ma’am, to see such a beautiful child deformed?" His grandmother joked, "How dare you! He’s not deformed; he’s just drunk!"
In 1937, the Behan family moved to a newly built local council housing scheme on Kildare Road in Crumlin, which Dubliners considered the countryside. Stephen joked that the working class was being sent "To Hell or to Kimmage," a play on Oliver Cromwell’s statement that the Irish should be sent "To Hell or to Connacht." At this time, Behan left school at 13 to begin an apprenticeship as a house painter, following in the footsteps of his father and both grandfathers.
IRA activities
Behan joined Fianna Éireann, the boy scout group linked to the Anti-Treaty IRA. He wrote his first poems and stories for the group’s magazine, Fianna: the Voice of Young Ireland. In 1931, he became the youngest person published in The Irish Press with his poem titled Reply of Young Boy to Pro-English verses.
At age 16, Behan joined the IRA and went on a secret mission alone to England to plant a bomb at Cammell Laird shipyard. He was caught with explosives. British officials tried to convince him to testify against his IRA leaders in exchange for being moved to Canada or another part of the British Commonwealth under a new name.
Behan refused to cooperate. As a 16-year-old, he was sentenced to three years in a borstal (Hollesley Bay, once managed by Cyril Joyce) and did not return to Ireland until 1941. He wrote about this time in his memoir Borstal Boy.
In 1942, during a state of emergency declared by Irish leader Éamon de Valera, Behan was arrested by the Garda Síochána after protesting the execution of IRA member George Plant. Later that year, he was arrested again during a commemoration event planned by the IRA for Theobald Wolfe Tone. When police confronted the group, one IRA member aimed a revolver but did not fire. Behan told him to "use it, use it." When no shot was fired, Behan shouted: "Give it to me and I will shoot the bastards." After receiving the gun, Behan fired two shots at the police and escaped but was later arrested on April 10, 1942. He was found guilty of conspiracy to murder and attempted murder of two Garda detectives and sentenced to 14 years in prison.
Behan was first held in Mountjoy Prison in Dublin, where he wrote his play The Quare Fellow based on a fellow prisoner. In June 1944, he was interned at the Curragh Camp in County Kildare with other IRA members, Allied and German airmen. He later wrote about this experience in his memoir Confessions of an Irish Rebel. Released in 1946 under a general amnesty for IRA prisoners, Behan’s active IRA career ended by age 23. In 1947, he was briefly imprisoned again for trying to free an IRA member from prison in Manchester. After this, he left the IRA but remained friends with Cathal Goulding, the IRA’s long-term Chief of Staff.
Writer
Brendan Behan’s time in prison was important for his writing career. While in Mountjoy Prison, he wrote his first play, The Rent Woman. Recently, act one of this play was found in the archives of the National Library of Ireland, along with acts two and three of an Irish language version of the play, An Bhean Ciosa, which means The Rent Woman. He also began writing short stories and other prose during this time. A literary magazine called Envoy (A Review of Literature and Art), started by John Ryan, first published Behan’s short stories and his first poem. Some of his early work was also published in The Bell, a major Irish literary magazine of that time. He learned to speak Irish in prison and began writing plays. In late 2024, Dublin playwright Jimmy Murphy discovered act one of The Rent Woman in the National Library of Ireland’s archives, along with Behan’s handwritten acts two and three of An Bean Ciósa, the Irish version of the play. After his release in 1946, he spent time in the Gaeltacht areas of Galway and Kerry counties, where he started writing poetry in Irish.
During this time, he worked for the Commissioners of Irish Lights. The lighthouse keeper at Saint John’s Point, County Down, recommended his dismissal, calling him “the worst specimen” he had met in 30 years of service and saying he showed “careless indifference” and “no respect for property.”
In the early 1950s, Behan left Ireland to live in Paris, where he felt he could focus on his art. Although he drank heavily, he earned a living, supposedly by writing pornography. He returned to Dublin and began writing seriously, publishing in papers like The Irish Times. In 1953, he wrote a serial based on his knowledge of crime in Dublin and Paris, later published as The Scarperer.
For the rest of his career, Behan worked from 7 a.m. until noon, when pubs opened. He wrote for radio, and his play The Leaving Party was broadcast. In the 1950s, Ireland was a place where people drank heavily. Behan became known as a well-known partygoer and spent time with other writers at McDaid’s pub, including Flann O’Brien, Patrick Kavanagh, and others. He had a conflict with Kavanagh, who reportedly disliked him and called him “evil incarnate.”
In 1954, Behan’s play The Quare Fellow (originally called The Twisting of Another Rope) was performed in Dublin. It showed life in prison and the execution of a character who is never seen. The play was later performed in London and transferred to Broadway, giving Behan international recognition. A drunken appearance on a TV show with actor Jackie Gleason helped promote the play. Gleason joked that Behan’s performance was “an act of Guinness.”
In 1958, Behan’s Irish-language play An Giall (The Hostage) opened in Dublin. It told the story of a British soldier held hostage by the IRA and his relationship with an Irish convent girl. The English-language version, The Hostage, added new characters and was more humorous.
Behan’s autobiographical novel Borstal Boy (1958) described his time in a British prison in England. The book showed his move away from violence and his realization that political violence was not effective.
Behan admired Father William Doyle, a Jesuit priest who died in battle during World War I. He wrote about Doyle in Borstal Boy. Alfred O’Rahilly’s biography of Doyle was one of Behan’s favorite books.
Personal life
In February 1955, Behan married Beatrice Ffrench Salkeld, who was an artist who drew plants for The Irish Times. Beatrice was the daughter of painter Cecil Ffrench Salkeld. In 1963, a daughter named Blanaid was born, a few months before Behan’s death. Some sources say Behan was bisexual.
Decline and death
Behan found fame difficult. He drank a lot over a long time and once said he was "a drinker with a writing problem." He also said he drank only when he was thirsty and when he wasn't. He developed diabetes in the early 1950s, but doctors did not discover it until 1956. As his fame grew, his alcohol addiction worsened. This led to many well-known public appearances where he was very drunk, both on stage and on television. His favorite drinks were champagne and sherry.
The public admired his clever, challenging, and friendly personality, and he gave them that in large amounts. He once said, "There's no bad publicity except an obituary." His health worsened, with diabetic comas and seizures happening often. People who once supported him began to reject him. Bar owners threw him out of their places. His books, Brendan Behan's Island, Brendan Behan's New York, and Confessions of an Irish Rebel, published in 1962 and 1964, were recorded onto a tape recorder because he could no longer write or type for long periods.
Behan died on March 20, 1964, after collapsing at the Harbour Lights bar (now Harkin's Harbour Bar) on Echlin Street in Dublin. He was taken to Meath Hospital in central Dublin, where he died at age 41. At his funeral, a full IRA guard of honor escorted his coffin. Newspapers described it as the largest Irish funeral since those of Michael Collins and Charles Stewart Parnell.
Irish sculptor James Power created a death mask of Brendan Behan.
After his death, his wife had a son, Paudge Behan, with Cathal Goulding, a leader in the Irish Republican Army and the Official IRA.
In 1961, Behan had a one-night relationship with Valerie Danby-Smith, who later married Gloria Hemingway, the daughter of Ernest Hemingway. Nine months later, Valerie gave birth to a son named Brendan. Brendan Behan died two years later, never meeting his son.
In popular culture
Brendan Behan is often mentioned in popular culture works. His writing influenced Shane MacGowan, and he is the subject of the song "Streams of Whiskey" by The Pogues. The Pogues' song "Thousands Are Sailing," written by lead guitarist Philip Chevron, includes the line "in Brendan Behan's footsteps / I danced up and down the street." Behan is also mentioned in Damien Dempsey's song "Jar Song." His version of the third verse of "The Internationale" from Borstal Boy was printed on the album cover of Dexys Midnight Runners' debut album, Searching for the Young Soul Rebels.
The US website Irish Central named Behan one of the greatest Irish writers of all time. Australian singer-songwriter Paul Kelly wrote the song "Laughing Boy" as a tribute to Behan, and it was later covered by Weddings, Parties, Anything on their album Roaring Days. The Mighty Mighty Bosstones' 2000 album Pay Attention includes the song "All Things Considered," which has the lyrics "Most of what he tells us no one's verified / He swears he was there the day that Brendan Behan died."
Behan is mentioned in the song "Thinking Voyager 2 Type Things" from Bob Geldof's 1990 album Vegetarians of Love, with the lines "So rise up Brendan Behan and like a drunken Lazarus / Let's traipse the high bronze of the evening sky like crack crazed kings." Chicago-based band The Tossers wrote the song "Breandan Ó Beacháin," released on their 2008 album On A Fine Spring Evening. Shortly after Behan's death, a student named Fred Geis wrote the song "Lament for Brendan Behan," which was performed by the Clancy Brothers on their album Recorded Live in Ireland the same year. This song, which calls Behan "Ireland's sweet angry singer," was later covered by the Australian group The Doug Anthony All Stars on their album Blue.
Seamus Robinson's song "Brendan" is a tribute to Behan. His prison song "The Auld Triangle," from his play The Quare Fellow (a term for a prisoner condemned to be hanged), has become a standard and has been recorded by folk musicians and bands like The Pogues, The Dubliners, the Dropkick Murphys, and The Doug Anthony All Stars. Behan is also referenced in the opening line of the Mountain Goats song "Commandante," where the narrator says, "I will drink more whiskey than Brendan Behan."
Two poems from Behan's work The Hostage—"On the Eighteenth Day of November" and "The Laughing Boy"—were translated into Swedish and recorded by Ann Sofi Nilsson on the album När kommer dagen. The same poems were translated into Greek in 1966 and recorded by Maria Farantouri on the album Ένας όμηρος by Mikis Theodorakis.
Irish actor Shay Duffin wrote and performed a one-person show in which he portrayed Behan. A pub named after Behan is located in the Jamaica Plain section of Boston, Massachusetts. A bronze sculpture of Behan sits on the banks of the Royal Canal, and a bronze of his head is displayed inside Searson's bar, one of his favorite places, on Pembroke Road in Dublin.
According to J.P. Donleavy's History of The Ginger Man, Behan helped connect Donleavy with M. Girodios of Olympia Press in Paris to publish Donleavy's first novel, The Ginger Man, despite its controversial content.
In the Mad Men episode "Blowing Smoke" (Season 4, 2010), Midge Daniels introduces Don to her husband, Perry, and says, "When we met, I said he looked like Brendan Behan."
In May 2011, Brendan at the Chelsea, written by Behan's niece Janet Behan, was the first play performed at the Naughton Studio of the new Lyric Theatre in Belfast. The play tells the story of Behan's time at New York's Hotel Chelsea in 1963 and was later revived for a tour in New York and Belfast.
Morrissey's 2014 song "Mountjoy" references Behan with the lyrics: "Brendan Behan's laughter rings / For what he had or hadn't done / For he knew then as I know now / That for each and every one of us / We all lose / Rich or poor, / We all lose / Rich or poor, they all lose."
In 1959, Peter Sellers parodied Behan's TV interviews in the sketch "In a Free State" on the album Songs for Swingin' Sellers. The sketch features an interview with Mr. Bedham, an Irish playwright described as "slurred, angry, panting, and ready to commit murder to get at a drink." According to journalist William J. Weatherby, Behan's wife admired Sellers' impersonation and found Bedham's references to "the thirst" to be the most accurate part of the sketch. The sketch was written by Max Schreiner with music by Ron Goodwin.
Most recently, The Dropkick Murphys mentioned Behan's influence on Irish music on their 2025 album For The People. In 2026, a plaque was placed on Russell Street to honor Brendan Behan.