Some time in the early 1980s, Brian Friel and Stephen Rea came to my home in Mayo and asked me to write a play for Field Day. That afternoon, I told them the stories of two Irishmen who ended up as master propagandists in the second World War, Brendan Bracken as Minister of Information in England and William Joyce ("Lord Haw Haw") as Germany's best-known broadcaster in the English language.
The play which came out of these stories was called Double Cross and the idea was to have the same actor play both men. This was to underline the fact that both men were remarkable mirror-images of one another. There is no evidence that they ever met, but they meet in the play through the use of film. What made it a Field Day play, I suppose, was the way both men went to extraordinary lengths to reinvent themselves and to lose their Irish identities.
Of the two, Bracken was the more complex character and therefore the more difficult to capture in the artifice of a stage play. Besides, there is always a levelling out of character in a fanatic ideologue - and Joyce was certainly that. He had the clenched stiffness of the true Fascist, thereby losing the unpredictability which makes the human interesting.
By contrast, Bracken was a mercurial extrovert who played out the various roles he gave himself with the skills of a great actor. He moved from a typical, nationalist, Catholic, Irish background to become Churchill's right-hand man. He was a member of the British war cabinet, a brief, slightly ludicrous First Lord of the Admiralty and later Viscount Bracken of Christchurch, at the very top of the heap.
The whole, astonishing story is to be found in an excellent biography by Charles Edward Lysaght.
Bracken was born 100 years ago this week in Templemore, Co Tipperary. His father was one of the seven founders of the GAA in 1884. The family soon moved to Kilmallock, Co Limerick, where the father died prematurely. Young Brendan became impossible to control. He ran away from boarding school in Mungret and checked himself in to a local hotel under the name Mr R. O. Jones, perhaps the first of his acquired identities. At the age of 15, he was shipped off to a priest cousin in Australia. That should have been the end of the story, but it was only the beginning.
As with all great con-artists, the key to Bracken's career was speed of action. He moved so fast that those around him only saw a blur. Less than 10 years after his unseemly exit from Ireland, not only was he back in London but he had also inserted himself outrageously into the Churchill household and become a powerful figure in one of London's stately publishers, Eyre and Spottiswoode.
One of Eyre's editors described how he entered the boardroom one day. At the top of the table sat this twentysomething man with wild, red hair and jam-jar spectacles. He was surrounded by the venerable elders of the board, utterly entranced, while he addressed all and sundry as "my dear".
How he beguiled Churchill is a mystery. A rumour circulated that he was Winston's illegitimate son, and neither man did anything to scotch it. Perhaps it was a case of one scoundrel attracting another. Both, in turn, were drawn to another buccaneer, Lord Beaverbrook, the press baron, and they made quite a triumvirate while Bracken was alive.
One of the individuals who saw through the interloper was Churchill's wife, Clemmie. She was furious at the way he invaded her house, and implored her husband to deny the scandalous rumours about Bracken's parentage, but he merely replied that he would look into it. She knew there was something fishy about this extraordinary newcomer, though even she finally succumbed to the Bracken magic - and in his will he left her some of his rare porcelain.
Before his entry into English society Bracken had prepared the ground like a hunter knowing exactly where he was headed towards. From Australia, he moved to England, where he persuaded the headmaster of a minor public school, Sedbergh, to take him in for one year as a sixth-former. This, despite the fact that he was obviously too old to be at school in the first place. Some in the school didn't know what to make of him with his wild stories of Australia, and he already displayed a knowledge of finance and banking far beyond the reaches of anyone in the place, masters or pupils.
Meanwhile, the pupil was studying the codes by which the upper reaches of English society moved so smoothly. He came to know the whole structure of this world, particularly the way in which its money worked. Along the way, he developed a passion for the Church of England, even becoming a broker in the appointment of its bishops. When he was asked by a pupil of his old public school for the secret of his success he replied, with commendable accuracy, "Knowing the right people".
There are many stories of Bracken in full flight, but perhaps the best is that told by Churchill's son, Randolph, who had an ambivalent relationship with this Irish invader. It is worth quoting in some detail as it catches Bracken in the act of playing power at the highest level, even as a form of comedy:
"Here is Randolph:
I recall being at Chartwell with my father that Sunday in 1931 when Britain went off the gold standard. Brendan, who was 30 at the time, arrived about 10.30 a.m. in his chauffeur-driven Hispano-Suiza, which the early writings of Michael Arlen had led him to believe was the appropriate vehicle for a rising and fast-moving young man.
"He had spent the night at Mereworth near Maidstone with Mr Esmond Harmsworth (now Lord Rothermere) and before leaving London had had a talk with the deputy-governor of the Bank of England. (I am sure that if the governor, Mr Montagu Norman, had not been in Canada at that time, Brendan would have had no truck with a mere deputy.)
"Brendan, having communicated his news and impressions of the crisis, was pressed to stay for luncheon but excused himself, saying he had to hurry on to Churt to confer with Mr Lloyd George. Thereafter, he was committed to call on Lord Beaverbrook at Cherkley . . .
"On the Monday morning, fortified with the fruits of his well-timed sortie into the political countryside, he was able to make a quick run around the City, calling upon the Bank of England and the chairmen and managers of the Big Five banks.
"Thus when the House of Commons met at 2.45 p.m., Brendan, though he had only been an M.P. for two years, was admirably equipped to explain the facts of life, as he saw them, to his fellow members in the lobby and in the smoking-room."
Although he seemed to be at the centre of political power, it is doubtful if Bracken ever wielded that power as such. However, his letters to Beaverbrook throughout his life offer a fascinating running commentary on the Tory affairs of state, particularly on the trials and tribulations of Macmillan, whom he came to despise.
Bracken's real, considerable achievement was in financial journalism. He persuaded his conservative directors at Eyre and Spottiswoode to take over the Financial News and Economist and, eventually, the Financial Times. It could be said that Bracken was responsible for the creation of modern financial journalism as we now know it. Along the way, he managed to become chairman of the giant South African mining company, Union Corporation.
In his late 50s, he developed throat cancer which he faced with humour and great courage. "I shall not be encircled with gloom if the treatment fails," he said. "I have had a lively interesting life." Much to the annoyance of both Churchill and Beaverbrook, he arranged to have all his personal papers burned. Mysterious to the end.
When we were doing research on the play Double Cross, Stephen Rea, director, Jim Sheridan and myself went to listen to the voices of Bracken and William Joyce in the BBC archive. There was an eerie similarity in the accents. Both were concoctions with the hints of other accents, faint echoes of other lives, below the surface.
Brendan Bracken by Charles Edward Lysaght (published by Allen Lane) is out of print
The Limerick theatre company, Impact's production of Double Cross by Thomas Kilroy opened this week at Friar's Gate Theatre, Kilmallock, Co Limerick, and will tour to Listowel, Wexford, Galway, Kilkenny, Sligo, Cork and Belfast