Brendan Francis Behan, who was born in South Dublin in 1923. His family included some colorful characters, such as an uncle who wrote the Irish national anthem, as well as a grandmother who aided I.R.A. fugitives and even “served three years on an explosives charge.” At age 13, Behan walked out of school for the last time and joined his dad as a housepainter. Not content to just make ends meet, the ambitious lad eventually sought I.R.A. explosives training and, shortly after his sixteenth birthday, set off to Liverpool with a backpack full of dynamite.

However, Behan’s bombing debut backfired. He was arrested, taken to a precinct house, stomped into oblivion, dragged to a cell, then led to court where, black-eyed and limping, he testified to his “unyielding determination to regain every inch of Ireland’s national territory.” The audacious youth was then hauled away to Borstal Detention Center for a three-year stint, aptly chronicled in “The Borstal Boy” – a memoir masquerading as an outrageous novel – so amusing it makes one wish one had spent adolescence in a reformatory.

Though it proved great for Behan’s writing, captivity did absolutely nothing to make him a lawful citizen and, after enjoying his newfound freedom, the Borstal alum had a nasty gunfight with two detectives in the middle of Dublin’s Glasnevin Cemetery (where he now rests). By then a repeat attempted-murderer, he received a soul-destroying fourteen-year sentence to notorious Mountjoy Prison. Once acclimated with the dismal venue, however, he made the most of his time by learning Irish from another inmate and entering into correspondence with writer Sean O’Faolain. Even more fortunate for Behan, his lengthy sentence was abruptly commuted after four years as part of a Christmas amnesty.

Having already picked up the pen while incarcerated, the quick-witted ex-con found that he was a far better writer than bomber. He published several prose pieces in reputable journals and also spent some time in Paris with the likes of Albert Camus and Irishman Samuel Beckett. Such genteel company influenced the young Behan, as the rebel spirit acquired some discipline. Upon his return to Dublin, he found steady employment writing for the “Irish Times.” He also penned a play, “The Quare Fellow,” in which a prisoner is condemned to a fate at the end of a rope. This foreboding drama eventually catapulted Behan into international stardom. With his growing literary achievements and outlandish personality, the Irishman became a legendary figure.

Self-described as a “drinker with a writing problem,” Behan’s inveterate copulation with booze resulted in some memorable public moments, such as his immediate expulsion from Francisco Franco’s Spain when, upon arrival, the jovially intoxicated writer announced to media that he had come for the very-much-alive dictator’s “funeral.” Another Behan classic came while giving a lecture at Montreal’s McGill University, where the quasi-staggering Irishman caught sight of a British monarch picture and launched into obscenity-laced vitriol.

Having long ago lost a kidney in a precinct stomping, Behan’s barhopping antics only worsened his battered body. In fact, he drank himself into diabetes, and then tried to fight his diabetes by drinking. In what would be his last bout with liquor, the forty-one-year-old collapsed on the floor of Dublin’s Harbor Lights Bar and was taken to nearby Meath Hospital. On the brink of eternity, the avowed disreputable soul made peace with the world by blessing several nuns at his bedside and then expressing his hope that their “sons all be bishops.”