It is evident from his plays and other writings that one of the major factors in Behan's life was his involvement with the Irish Republican cause. He inherited his Republican sympathies from his intensely patriotic working-class family: when Brendan was born on 9 February 1923 in Dublin, his father, Stephen Behan, a housepainter, labor leader, and soldier, was serving a jail term for IRA activities during the Irish civil war; his mother, Kathleen Kearney Behan, boasted of her ability to sing rebel songs; his uncle, Peadar Kearney, wrote the Irish national anthem; and at the age of seventy-seven, his stepgrandmother was arrested and sentenced to three years in an English prison for terrorist activities. Educated from 1928 to 1937 at Irish Catholic schools and employed as an apprentice housepainter from 1937 until 1939, Behan himself was imprisoned in 1939 when he was arrested in Liverpool for possession of explosives. After serving two years in a Borstal institution (an English reform school), Behan returned to Dublin but was soon involved in a drunken shootout with police that led to a sentence of fourteen years in prison.
This is a free page. This page contains 172 words. This
biography contains 2,446 words (approx. 8 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Biography with our Brendan Behan Access Pass.
