Description

Francis Stuart (1902-2000) was the author of 25 novels, including Black List , Section H , and was critically acclaimed by W.B. Yeats, Laurence Durrell, and J. M Coetzee, among others. He is arguably best known, however, for his broadcasts from Berlin for Hitler s Third Reich – a source of lifelong controversy – which led to accusations of being a Nazi collaborator and an anti-Semite. These accusations pursued Stuart into his nineties when he was forced to take a libel action against the Irish Times and won. In this authorised biography, Kevin Kiely recounts the fascinating story of Francis Stuart s life. Born in Australia, son of a prosperous sheep farmer who committed suicide, Stuart before the age of eighteen married Maud Gonne s daughter, Iseult, who was seven years older than him, a former lover of Ezra Pound s and who had refused marriage proposals from W.B. Yeats.
Stuart, recognised as a budding genius, was elected to the Irish Academy of Letters, became the squire of a Gothic castle in Wicklow, IRA gunrunner, Anti-Treaty soldier and internee during the Civil War, thereafter emerged as poet, novelist, gambler, racehorse-owner, prize-winning poultry farmer and seeker of mystical experiences. His Bohemian life in the 1930s coincided with the rise of Nazism. He left his children and failing marriage to lecture at the Friedrich-Wilhelm University in Berlin, witnessed the destruction of Germany, and later married Polish refugee, Gertrud Meissner who was accused of being a Nazi spy. Stuart survived years of poverty and neglect in post-War Paris and London. Returning to Ireland in the 1960s, he slowly became a legendary figure, friend of Samuel Beckett and other major literary luminaries; in 1982, he was invited into Aosdana, the academy of artists and writers. His membership and elevation to a Saoi of Aosdana, its highest award for artistic achievement, a public honour endorsed by the President of Ireland, Mary Robinson, became the subject of controversy fuelled by newspaper articles, documentaries on RTE Radio and TV, and Channel Four.
Leading Irish writers split into pro-Stuart and anti-Stuart groupings which still hold polemical resonance and bitterness – supporters such as Anthony Cronin, Ulick O Connor, Colm Toibin and Paul Durcan opposed to Conor Cruise O Brien, Maire Mhac an tSaoi, Christabel Bielenberg, Ronit and Louis Lentin and others. Kevin Kiely spent many hours in discussion with Francis Stuart and in this compelling biography recounts his remarkable life and considers the philosophical and literary beliefs of one of Ireland s leading thinkers of the 20th century.