Ciaran’s Peculier [sic] Blog

Flann O'Brien

Today April 1^s marks the forty-fourth anniversary of the death of Brian O’Nolan, aka Flann O’Brien, in my mind the greatest Irish writer of the twentieth century. He combined an immense intellect with a love of words. His second novel, The Third Policeman, is an overlooked jewel. Some of his best writing is to be found in his An Cruskeen Lawn column in The Irish Times, where he wrote under the nom-de-plume of Myes na gCopaleen. It was never enough for him to write for some numerically small elite who might understand him. Accessibility to the people of Ireland was as important. The world in which he lived appears to us the be anything but inspirational, apparently dominated by intellectual inertia and social sclerosis, yet Flann O’Brien’s genius was set ablaze by this unpromising environment.