Louis de Paor
2026 Cló Iar-Chonnacht
Before there was any mention of Myles na gCopaleen or Flann O’Brien, there was Brian Ó Nualláin (1911–66), a young man raised through Irish, who studied Irish for his degree and went on to complete an MA in Old Irish.
Naturally, it is no revelation to Irish-language readers that both the language and its literary heritage were central to works such as An Béal Bocht (1941), and to the numerous references to Irish literature in his Irish Times column, ‘Cruiskeen Lawn’, which was, in fact, first written in Irish.
What this study argues is that the experience of the Irish language was central to those novels that brought him international fame, namely At Swim-Two-Birds (1939) and The Third Policeman (1967), novels now regarded as outstanding examples of modernist fiction.
In fact, it can be argued that the imprint of the Irish language is so strong on Brian Ó Nualláin’s sharp bilingual imagination that he is, in effect, an Irish-language writer even when writing in English.