About Borstal Boy
Borstal Boy is a 1958 autobiographical book by Brendan Behan. The story depicts a young, fervently idealistic Behan, who loses his naïveté over the three years of his sentence to a juvenile borstal, softening his radical Irish republican stance and warming to his British fellow prisoners.[1] From a technical standpoint, the novel is chiefly notable for the art with which it captures the lively dialogue of the Borstal inmates, with a variety of the many subtly distinctive accents of Britain and Ireland intact on the page. Ultimately, Behan demonstrated by his skillful dialogue that working class Irish Catholics and English Protestants actually had more in common with one another through class than they had supposed, and that alleged barriers of religion and ethnicity were merely superficial and imposed by a fearful middle class.
The book is available from all good and bad booksellers, on Kindle and audiobook. There are also lots of very affordable pre-owned copies on eBay.
We’d love for you to join us for our very first book club evening!
The book club will take place online and tickets for the event are free.
As always, we strive to ensure that our events are a safe space for our LGBTQ community and friends. To do this, we ask that you register for the event beforehand. You can read our privacy policy here.
You can book your place at the event here or in the Eventbrite widget below.
The link will go live at 1855 on November 19th and our moderator will allow you enter the Zoom meeting. You will receive the link to join the event in your confirmation email. Please keep this safe. Will will also send you a reminder just before the event.
If you have any comments or questions, please email londonirishlgbtnetwork@gmail.com
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