The International Flann O’Brien Society

The brother is always on the ball

13. Joseph LaBine: Flann O'Brien and Radio A special edition of the Radio Myles podcast dedicated to Joe and Toby's special edition of the Parish Review about Flann O'Brien and the radio.

Now, for your listening pleasure, the latest instalment of the podcast Radio Myles. Toby Harris and Joseph LaBine provide fascinating context to mid-century Irish radio and their excellent special issue of the Journal of Flann O’Brien Studies on O’Brien and the Radio. Get your headphones ready!

"The first beginnings of wisdom," he said, "is to ask questions but never to answer any." Flann O'Brien, The Third Policeman

Post a book quote that you love. #booksky #bookchallenge #writers #authors #readers #booklovers

BBC Radio 4 - A Good Read, Martin Edwards and Tom Shakespeare The crime writer and the sociologist talk about books they love with Harriett Gilbert.

#Books A Good Read
Five Little Pigs by Agatha Christie, chosen by crime writer @martinedwardsbooks.bsky.social
At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien, chosen by @tomshakespeare.bsky.social
Thursday Night Widows by Claudia Pineiro, chosen by @harriettsg.bsky.social
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

My other favourite wild reading book is The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien. Now I’m wondering if it was never published in his lifetime partly because of worries about its digressive, footnotey anti-structure.
His At Swim-Two-Birds was at least as wild but in yet another way. Genius

"Waiting for the German verb is surely the ultimate thrill!" —Flann O'Brien, after reading Kant's Critique of Pure Reason

Garda who lent bike to man to receive over €250k damages A garda detective who was suspended for more than three years for giving a man a loan of a bicycle during the Covid-19 pandemic is to receive over €250,000 in damages.

Flann O'Brien reports:

www.rte.ie/news/courts/...

CFP for Transformations: Irish Literature and Social Change Call for Proposals for a new edited collection on Transformations: Irish Literature and Social Change The early decades of Irish independence are now remembered as a time of repression and socioeconom...

Call for Proposals for a new edited collection on 'Transformations: Irish Literature and Social Change’: the artistic works which have reflected and even helped to activate what could be described as a revolution in the Irish experience of class, disability, race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality.

Get your tickets for ATHRAITHEOIR at the Smock Alley Theatre on 26 February.

Strongly influenced by Flann O'Brien, ATHRAITHEOIR bends Buile Shuibhne (The Madness of Sweeney) into a multidisciplinary performance of oration, movement and Irish literary echo.

Review of <em>Myles na gCopaleen agus Flann O’Brien: An Saol Bocht </em>by Brian Ó Conchubhair (Leabhar Breac, 2025) Myles na gCopaleen agus Flann O’Brien: An Saol Bocht is the first book-length biography of Flann O'Brien in over 30 years. Brian Ó Conchubhair has crafted a rigourously researched narrative that adds ...

Now published in the Journal of Flann O'Brien Studies, Jonathan O'Neill's review of Brian Ó Conchubhair's award-winning biography 'Myles na gCopaleen agus Flann O’Brien: An Saol Bocht'. #speirgorm

A man against whom public transport held a clear grudge

Brian knew a thing or two about road crashes - he was in six or seven of them. Including being hit by a bus, which adds colour to the Brother's farewell: Begob, there's me bus.
@flannobriensoc.bsky.social
@maebhlong.bsky.social

Flann O'Brien was also known as the Count O'Blather, George Knowall, Peter the Painter , Brother Barnabus, John James Doe , Winnie Wedge, An Broc, and most famously as  Myles na gCopaleen. His Real Name was Brian O'Nuallain (Gaelic spelling)

The #MylesnaGopaleen Catechism of Cliche

Is man ever hurt in a motor crash?
No. He sustains an injury.
Does such a man ever die from his injuries?
No. He succumbs to them.
...
Is he dead when he gets to the hospital?
No, he is not dead. Life is found to be extinct...

cbladey.com/irish/HomePa...

The Poor Mouth, Flann O'Brien

The Poor Mouth, Flann O'Brien

Delicious Irish language satire as An Béal Bocht, the English translation gives the feeling of bursting at the seams of the language. A rec from @mattrshelton.bsky.social

8/

Found by chance a strange old book that I found quite enjoyable: The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien.
Recommended if you like it weird.
DO NOT read a plot summary because major spoiler.

Communiqué from the Desk of Effy:

There is a shortage of references to the works of Flann O'Brien lately. I know that with the drink trade on its last legs and the land running fallow for the want of artificial manures, things are difficult, but-

13. Joseph LaBine: Flann O'Brien and Radio A special edition of the Radio Myles podcast dedicated to Joe and Toby's special edition of the Parish Review about Flann O'Brien and the radio.

Now, for your listening pleasure, the latest instalment of the podcast Radio Myles. Toby Harris and Joseph LaBine provide fascinating context to mid-century Irish radio and their excellent special issue of the Journal of Flann O’Brien Studies on O’Brien and the Radio. Get your headphones ready!

“What goes on on the shrapnel-pocked crust of H.M. Mother Earth”: Brian O’ Nolan and the Second World War This article examines the significance of the Second World War to the writings of Brian O’Nolan via the multidisciplinary and multilingual research of the entire corpus of O'Nolan's Cruiskeen Lawn art...

Hot off the press at the Journal of Flann O'Brien Studies is Aoibh Crimmins' article, '"What goes on on the shrapnel-pocked crust of H.M. Mother Earth": Brian O’Nolan and the Second World War'. Crimmins investigates the thorny issue of engagements with fascism in the Cruiskeen Lawn. Read it here!👇

This is 100% the future of AI

Flann O'Brien and Social Media Rosemary Jenkinson analyses how a contemporary Flann O'Brien would fare in the toxic, combative era of social media, with reference to the Flamingo edition of The Best of Myles.

Have you long been aching to know how Flann O’Brien would have fared on Twitter? Or here on Bluesky? In the latest publication in the Journal of Flann O’Brien Studies, Rosemary Jenkinson reveals all!

#speirgorm

Flann O’Brien (Brian Ó Nuallain) was a comic genius. Check out his other masterpiece, At Swim-Two-Birds.

That is the only time to have had it

Flann O'Brien and Social Media Rosemary Jenkinson analyses how a contemporary Flann O'Brien would fare in the toxic, combative era of social media, with reference to the Flamingo edition of The Best of Myles.

Have you long been aching to know how Flann O’Brien would have fared on Twitter? Or here on Bluesky? In the latest publication in the Journal of Flann O’Brien Studies, Rosemary Jenkinson reveals all!

#speirgorm

From 2022: David Quantick on N. F. Simpson's novel, Harry Bleachbaker: "It reads like Flann O’Brien, ... like Samuel Beckett, and ... like an extended Monty Python sketch, but always it is a world gone mad which is nevertheless ordered by the strictest rules of logic."
neglectedbooks.com/?...
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"Waiting for the German verb is surely the ultimate thrill.“ (Flann O'Brien)

Screenshot with list of published articles at the Parish Review

The first three publications of Volume 9, Issue 2 (2025) of The Parish Review: Journal of Flann O’Brien Studies / @theparishreview.bsky.social have been published. Read them here: parishreview.openlibhums.org/issue/1743/i...

Cross-Genre Reflections in Paul Muldoon’s ‘Le Flanneur’ I read Paul Muldoon's dense, complex, shifting sonnet, ‘Le Flanneur’ (2011), to explore Muldoon’s reflections on and affinities with Brian O'Nolan. 'Le Flanneur' delicately considers O'Nolan's life, c...

Next up in the Journal of Flann O’Brien Studies, Calista McRae reads Paul Muldoon's sonnet, ‘Le Flanneur’ (2011), against his reflections on and affinities with Brian O'Nolan.

McRae traces both writers’ interest in cliches, terrible puns, and language that is funny, tricky and very readable.

In case it got lost in the Christmas and New Year's shuffle: re-sharing the link to my new open-access article "H. L. Morrow & Brian O’Nolan on Radio Éireann", published in the Journal of Flann O'Brien Studies' special issue "Flann O'Brien and the Radio"!
parishreview.openlibhums.org/article/id/2...

DEAD AS DOORNAILS by Anthony Cronin, with an introduction by Joseph O'Connor 🍺

We are delighted to be bringing out a new edition of Anthony Cronin's masterpiece memoir, recounting a post-war literary Dublin, living alongside the likes of Brendan Behan, Patrick Kavanagh and Flann O'Brien.

👉🏻 Songs to the Siren, a new exhibition opening 24 January at The Model in Sligo, reflects on the pseudonyms and hidden identities of Flann O’Brien / Brian O’Nolan.

Curated by artists Paul Hallahan and Lee Welch, this is a must-see for fans of O’Brien (and of Tim Buckley, who inspired the title!)