Brendan Behan

Brendan Francis Aidan Behan (9 February 1923 – 20 March 1964) was an Irish poet, short story writer, novelist, and playwright who wrote in both English and Irish. He was also an Irish republican and a volunteer in the Irish Republican Army. Born in Dublin into a republican family, he became a member of the IRA's youth organisation Fianna Éireann at the age of fourteen. However, there was also a strong emphasis on Irish history and culture in the home, which meant he was steeped in literature and patriotic ballads from an early age. Behan eventually joined the IRA at sixteen, which led to his serving time in a borstal youth prison in the United Kingdom and he was also imprisoned in Republic of Ireland. During this time, he took it upon himself to study and he became a fluent speaker of the Irish language. Subsequently released from prison as part of a general amnesty given by the Fianna Fáil government in 1946, Behan moved between homes in Dublin, Kerry and Connemara, and also resided in Paris for a time.
== Tossup Questions ==
# In a play by this author, a man receives a silver cane from the Combined Staffs, Excess and Refunds branch of the Great Southern Railways but uses the cane to beat his wife to death. In that play by this man, a five-person chorus includes The Embezzler, The Boy from the Island, and The Man of Thirty. This author, who used the pseudonym "Emmet Street" to publish the serial novel The Scarperer, bookended that play with the prison dirge "The Old Triangle." This author of The Quare Fellow also wrote about Ken's unsuccessful escape earning a sentence in the "chokey" and about befriending Charlie and Ginger following a raid on his bomb-making house in Liverpool. For 10 points, name this besotted Irish nationalist author of the autobiographical Borstal Boy.