Life
1916-1991; b. Malahide, Co. Dublin; gs. of J. R. Blood on his mother’s
side and possibly a descendent of Col. Thomas Blood of ‘Crown Jewels’
fame; cousin to the Findlater and Park families; ed. Shrewsbury, TCD and
Magdalen College, Oxon.; spent summer in Germany and encountered anti-semitism
and war-preparations, 1938; worked seven months on Irish Times under
Smyllie while waiting to join RAF; received flight-training in Rhodesia;
served in Coastal Command in Gambia (where he saw action) and Gibraltar,
and acted as trainer in Enniskillen; mentioned in RAF dispatches, but
agreed with an Irish friend to go on strike if the British attacked the
Irish ports; demobbed as Squadron Leader; resumed work on The Irish
Times, ‘Features, Specials’, 1945; applied, successfully
on the second attempt, for Forces Grant scheme to take Ph.D. in history
at TCD, supervised by T. W. Moody and examined externally by Asa Briggs,
1948; contrib. short story, ‘Tricolour’ to Envoy early
issue; ed. of The Leader (Dublin) when Patrick Kavanagh unsuccessfully
sued the paper for a profile of him, 1952; published Freedom of the
Press in Ireland (1954), based on his doctoral work; issued The
Story of Ireland (1956); head-hunted for Daily Sketch by
Stuart McClean of Assoc. Newspapers and moved to London on completion
of degree, 1953; joined The Spectator, 1954, and edited
it 1959-62, recruiting Bernard Levin (as “Taper”), Cyril Ray,
Robert Kee and occas. Brendan Behan and Katharine Whitehorn; became television
presenter with What the Papers Say; staff-writer for Granada’s
modern British history programme All Our Yesterdays (1961-73);
m. Ruth Woodeson (“Boo”), 1958, with whom a son Neil b. 1962,
half-br. to her dg. Diana by a former husband; sep. after some years;
issued West Briton (1962; rep. 1989); enjoyed friendship with Rosemary
Delbridge (d.1981); wrote script and supplied voice-over for Jeremy Isaac’s
The Troubles (Granada TV 1963); issued Private Conscience,
Public Morality (1964); founding member of British-Irish Association
[latter BAIS], Cambridge 1973; issued Roger Casement (1973),
widely-considered the best biography on the subject; issued Natural
and Supernatural (1978), a historical study of the paranormal contesting
‘promissory materialism’; formed KIB Foundation with Arthur
Koestler and Instone Bloomfield, 1980; finds happiness in 1980s with Margaret
van Hattem, pol. corr. for Financial Times; issued Downstart
(1990) a further gathering of memoirs. DIW OCIL
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Works
Freedom of the Press in Ireland [IHS] (London: Faber & Faber
1954). BIBL, ‘Irish Double-Thought’, in The Spectator,
188 (7 March 1952), p.289; ‘Smuggled Culture’, The Spectator,
188 (28 November 1952), p.726; The Story of Ireland (London: Faber
1956); ‘Moran of the Leader’, in Castleknock Chronicle (1956)
[text of Thomas Davis Lecture]; ‘Moran of the Leader and Ryan of
the Irish Peasant’, in Conor Cruise O’Brien, ed., The
Shaping of Modern Ireland (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1960);
Fringe Medicine ([q. pub.] 1964) Roger Casement (London:
Hodder & Stoughton 1973; Purnell Bk. Service 1973); and Do.
[rep. edn.] (Belfast: Blackstaff 1993), 462pp.; West Briton (London:
Faber and Faber 1962; rep. 1989) [ded. For Margaret, 1948-1989]; Natural
and Supernatural (London: Hodder & Stoughton 1978); Downstart:
The Autobiography of Brian Inglis (London: Chatto & Windus 1990),
298pp.
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Criticism
Terence de Vere White reviews Downstart, the autobiography
of Brian Inglis, in Sunday Tribune, 31, Dec. 1989.
Hubert Butler, ‘Grandmother and Wolfe Tone, The Sub-Prefect [… &c.] (1990), pp.71-77, essay, taking the form of a harsh review of West-Briton which provoked an exchange of letters in The Kilkenny Magazine (rep. in Grandmother and Wolfe Tone, pp.89-90) [ibid., ftn. p.77].
Brian Fallon, An Age of Innocence Irish Culture 1930-1960 (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1998), pp.174-75.
Blackstaff Books (1993 Cat.) quotes Terence de Vere White’s nominating Roger Casement (1973; rep. Blackstaff 1993) as the best book on Casement as well as Robert Kee’s calling it ‘meticulously, sympathetically, clinically unfolded, the only adequate biography of’ Roger Casement’.
Malcolm Brown, The Politics of Irish Literature, 1972, p.146.
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Notes
Library of Herbert Bell, Belfast, holds The Freedom of the Press in
Ireland 1784-1841 (Faber & Faber [1954]); The Story of Ireland (London
1956); Modern Ireland, Men of The Period [n.d.]; West Briton (London 1962);
also QRY, The History of The Irish Rebellion (Dublin [1943]);
Belfast Public Library holds The Freedom of the Press in Ireland 1784-1841 (1954); also, Story of Ireland [1956].
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 3: Inglis’s Casement (p.299) is quoted tellingly to show that Casement shared in - indeed, anticipated - Pearse’s dream of Irish nationhood being nurtured by blood-sacrifice, in Fr. Francis Shaw’s essay, ‘The Canon of Irish History - A Challenge’ (Studies 1972). [Field Day Anthology, Vol. 3: , p.594.]
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)