The wit of Brendan Behan;

Louis Macneice said of Brendan Behan: 'He ! wrote with plenty of hyperbole and emphasis. He was a man of humanity, gusto and formidable wit.'The problem of a collection of 'Behanisms' is not what to include, but what to omit. His writing was only a convenient way of letting the whole world know what he was saying. There was hardly a story he told that he didn't write, and there was hardly a quip he wrote that he didn't repeat and repeat, again and again. 'I'm like Shaw,' he once said, 'I always quote myself it adds spice to the conversation.''This collection of stories has been gathered from many sources and it shows only one side of Brendan . . . the witty talker and writer. But add to this a vaudevillian sense of comedy; the versatility of the true ego-pricker; the happy boyish belief that you can find a good man anywhere; and then, for perversity's sake, throw in the drinker, the fighter, the rebel, the borstal boy, the I 'pudding cheenis' and you have the complex figure that was Brendan Behan. Yet behind all these was another side . . . the serious writer; the man who was conscious that he had a contribution to make to world writing and who critics believe made it with his magnificent Borstal Boy.