I first met Joan in the early 1930s when she came to live with us in London. She had been living with a family in Spain where she formed lasting friendships and imbibed ideas which influenced her whole life. I only know of her early life from the scraps she told me later. Her parents were separated and she was brought up by her grandmother in the west of Ireland and Brittany. Back from Spain, she became secretary to Alfred Hitchcock and then to the actor Robert Donat. For a woman in her early twenties this was a fine start to a career, a start which was suddenly halted by tuberculosis.
She spent some two years in a sanatorium in Arosa in Switzerland, but recovered in time to return to England at the beginning of the second World War. After a short period as a monitor of foreign broadcasts, she became secretary to John Betjeman when he was High Commissioner in Dublin. His autobiography records his awe at her ability to discourse on all aspects of Europe and European literature!
In the early post-war years she had her own programme on Radio Eireann, Hither and Yon, discursive but acute chat and comment on life and happenings in Dublin and down the country. (I was enlisted if the programme needed a pub visit - women did not venture into pubs alone in 1948!)
She next moved to Paris, where she worked for some 10 years as editor of the NATO newsletter. Under her editorship it expanded from a simple news-sheet to a thoughtful commentary on international affairs.
Her interest in Spain did not diminish. Her novel The Spirit and the Clay about the Basque resistance during and after the Civil War was published in the United States in 1954 and was translated into several languages. It was highly esteemed by critics, but never became popular and has, sadly, been out of print for many years. She also wrote extensively on Spain in European newspapers and magazines. Her opinions caused her to be barred from Franco's Spain for some years.
She was always anxious to return to Ireland and, when an opportunity offered, she returned to Dublin to join Bord Failte in 1963. While still in Paris she had bought a dilapidated and part-ruined cottage at Cronroe, near Ashford in Co Wicklow, which she transformed over the years. I remember her in the late 1960s visiting sites round Dublin, and cajoling floor tiles, railings, and other desirables from demolition foremen. The sunny, attractive sitting room in which she entertained so many friends had originally been a pigsty.
However, writing was always her priority and she left Bord Failte in 1967 to concentrate on it. In 1974 she published Humanity Dick, a biography of Richard Martin, owner of Ballynahinch - and most of Connemara. Martin is best known for his love of animals, and his tireless (and often flamboyant) work for their welfare - he was a founder of the RSPCA. He was less caring for humans - he was a noted duellist! Her book is the definitive biography of Humanity Dick, and has been re-issued in paperback. It will probably be her chief memorial. She herself was a lover of animals; she had a much-loved horse, Killola, and was never without at least one well-fed, spoilt and affectionate cat.
Around this time she often spoke on the Radio Eireann programme Sunday Miscellany. Her amusing anecdotes and clear diction were always a pleasure to listen to. However, writing never brought in enough money to live on, and she spent the summers tour guiding; she was in demand for her fluent French and German as well as Spanish. As she grew older, she found it stressful and tiring work - one cause, I am sure, of her later ill-health.
She started work on a second novel, set in Galicia in north-west Spain. her writing was hampered by money worries, by increasing ill-health and lameness caused originally by a fall while guiding, and sadly the book remained unfinished at her death.
She loved people and with her warm heart had a huge and wide-ranging circle of friends, with whom she regularly kept in touch - just one aspect of her enormous vitality. She was a gifted conversationalist, combining anecdote and humour with comment.
She had a difficult life, from her rather lonely youth, and all her achievements were her very own. She was fiercely determined not to accept monetary help, however willingly offered. She faced all her problems with indomitable courage and an optimism which carried her through. Yet, unlike many people of similar determination, she never became hard. She was generous and thoughtful for others, and had a great store of compassion and sympathy for the underdog. These traits marked not just her personal relations but all her thought and writing on political subjects.
I do not remember seeing her depressed; her optimism and good humour carried her through; her keen brain and phenomenal memory stayed with her to the end. A wonderful person.
J.L.