As Hollelsley Bay prison yesterday bade farewell to Jeffrey Archer, its infamous novelist inmate, it is timely to recall that the British institution enjoys a unique and far more positive Irish literary association, writes Brendan Lynch.
For it was here that a youthful Brendan Behan spent the two years which were the subject of his best-selling Borstal Boy. The prison had a pivotal influence on his life. It influenced his literary development, showed him another side to the English character, and undoubtedly also left its mark on his sexual development.
The young Dubliner had been introduced to the classics by his father, Stephen, but in Hollesley Bay's well-stocked library he had access to modern poetry and literary criticism, and also to the work of such writers as Somerset Maugham, D. H. Lawrence, George Bernard Shaw, Thomas Hardy, and Frank Harris. It was in the Suffolk institution that Brendan won his first writing prize.
Beatrice Behan reiterated that it would be impossible to underestimate the influence of Hollesley Bay on her husband. "He went in a teenager at the age of 17, and came out two years later, a young man with much more mature ideas and confidence. "He was never bitter about his time there, as he was about other prison experiences. And each Easter, he sent a card to the governor and his wife, for whom he had a great grádh." Hollelsey Bay was a welcome contrast to Walton prison, where Brendan had been badly beaten by warders.
In Borstal Boy, he described his first agreeable sight of the east coast institution which was situated near Woodbridge in Suffolk.
"The buildings were big, rambling and timbered like the headquarters of the Horse Show or the Phoenix Park Racecourse." The governor, Cyril A. Joyce, was a broadminded and humane man who gave his guests encouragement, trust and space in which to develop.
He recollected the first meeting with Brendan, which got their relationship off to a flying start. Brendan said: "I have been examined by the doctor and I want to tell you that I have no inhibitions and my complexes are all in order!" The institution, which was divided into four Houses, featured drama and debating societies, as well as inter-house matches of rugby and soccer.
Each year, the governor organised an Eisteddford which included an essay competition. With rich evocations of Yeats, O'Casey, Shaw and other Irish writers and patriots, Brendan's entry was a sure favourite.
Borstal Boy recorded the announcement of the essay winner.
"The Major got up and said that there was one essay he had no trouble at all in recommending for the first prize.
"It was about 'the sad and beautiful capital of that sad and beautiful island...' and with that there was a great burst of applause, led I noticed by Shaggy Callaghan, with Jock and Joe adding their piece and Charlie, with his face lit up and his eyes near out of his jaws with excitement, clapping away like mad."
To another rapturous reception, Brendan also sang the Cúlainn in Gaelic.
It is not unlikely that his need for an audience and his knowledge of what the English demanded from Irish entertainers was also developed in Hollesley. Knowledge that he put to good use in the plays which Joan Littlewood so successfully subsequently produced in her London Theatre Royal.
Brendan's ready wit also made him a firm favourite with the governor's wife, who painted his portrait. Each week, the assistant matron gave him her copy of the New Statesman, while the matron encouraged his literary conversation.
She also reminded him that Dickens had written about the area and that Edward Fitzgerald had translated Omar Khayyam only a few miles away from the borstal.
Brendan's Hollesley Bay experience also changed forever his perception of the English, whom he had hitherto only known through legends of the Black and Tan excesses. His respect for the enlightened Governor Joyce provided him with an appreciation of the English sense of fair play.
He also learned to play rugby, a game he had previously thought was only for the English or the Irish upper orders.
Hollesley Bay played a pivotal role in Brendan's sexual awakening and subsequent bisexuality. But this was a condition which could never be discussed in Ireland during the strait-jacketed forties and fifties. Brendan's mixed feelings may have contributed to his self-destructive drinking.
When his bisexuality was referred to in Ulick O'Connor's biography, some of the Behan family threatened its author with violence and even Beatrice loyally denied the allegations.
While the novelist who leaves Hollesley this week returns to amillionaire lifestyle, all Brendan had on his 1941 discharge was the clothes on his back and a free travel pass.
But he went on to charm and move the world with his humanity and humour before he succumbed to diabetes and drink.
When Brendan died in 1967, the governor, Cyril A. Joyce, remembered: "He was one of the most lovable characters that ever passed through Borstal. No matter what he did you could not help liking the man." Beatrice Behan said that it was as if the writer had left a large part of his life in Hollesley Bay.