Constantine Fitzgibbon Explained

Robert Louis Constantine Lee-Dillon Fitzgibbon (Massachusetts 8 June 1919 - Dublin 25 March 1983) was a notable historian and novelist.

Birth, family and marriage

Constantine Fitzgibbon was born in the United States in 1919. He was raised and educated in France before moving to England. ^[1] His father was Irish, his mother American. Son of Commander Francis Lee-Dillon FitzGibbon, RN, and Georgette Folsom, Lenox, Mass, USA. Married 1967, Marjorie (née Steele); one daughter; (by a previous marriage to Marion (née Gutmann) one son, b 1961). He was half-brother of Louis Fitzgibbon, author of Katyn.

Education

Wellington College; Munich University; Sorbonne. He attended Exeter College, Oxford with a modern languages scholarship but left without a degree just before the outbreak of war in 1939.^[2]

Career

Fitzgibbon served in the Britsih Army untill 1942 before transferring to the United States Army as a staff officer at military intelligence. He worked as a schoolmaster for a short time after the war in Bermuda,^[3] at Saltus Grammar School, Bermuda, 1946-47; then independent writer. It was here he wrote his first two novels. He lived in Italy and spent many years in England before moving to Ireland in 1965.^[4]

Constantine Fitzgibbon has written a number of books including nine novels. One of the recurring subjects in his work was Nazi Germany. ^[5]

Historian, Journalist and Novelist expert. Served War of 1939-45, British Army (Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry), 1939-42; US Army, 1942-46. Constantine FitzGibbon said he was offered, but refused, a job with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) when it was created following World War II. His play, The Devil at Work was produced by the Abbey in 1971.

FitzGibbon was a member of the Council of the Irish Academy of Letters and an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Guggenheim Fellow. He later became an Irish citizen and lived in County Dublin. ^[6]

Publications

• The Arabian Bird (1949)
• The Iron Hoop (1950)
• Dear Emily (1952)
• Miss Finnigan's Fault (1953)
• Norman Douglas (1953)
• The Holiday (1953)
• The Little Tour (1954)
• The Shirt of Nessus (1955)
• In Love and War (1956)
• The Blitz (1957)
• Paradise Lost and More (1959)
• When the Kissing had to Stop (1960) new edition (posthumous), (1989)
• Adultery Under Arms (1962)
• Going to the River (1963)
• Random Thoughts of a Fascist Hyena (1963)
• The Life of Dylan Thomas (1965 ed.)
• Selected Letters of Dylan Thomas (1966 ed.)
• Through the Minefield (1967)
• Denazification (1969)
• High Heroic (a novel about the life of Michael Collins) (1969)
• Out of the Lion's Paw (1969)
• London's Burning (1970)
• Red Hand: The Ulster Colony (1971)
• The Devil at Work (1971) (play)
• A Concise History of Germany (1972)
• In the Bunker (1973)
• The Life and Times of Eamon de Valera (1973)
• The Golden Age (1976)
• Secret Intelligence (1976)
• Man in Aspic (1977)
• Teddy in the Tree (1977)
• Drink (1979)
• The Rat Report (1980)
• The Irish in Ireland (1982)
• and trans from French, German and Italian. Translator of the Rudolf Höß "autobiography". Contributor to Encyclopedia Britannica, newspapers and periodicals in Britain, America and elsewhere

When the Kissing Had to Stop

This novel was filmed 1962, directed by Bill Hitchcock and starring Denholm Elliott, Peter Vaughan and Douglas Wilmer^[7] .

References

1. Red Hand: The Ulster Colony, Constantine Fitzgibbon, Michael Joseph Ltd (1971)ISBN 7181 0881 7, Flyleaf Bio
2. Red Hand: The Ulster Colony, Constantine Fitzgibbon, Michael Joseph Ltd (1971)ISBN 7181 0881 7, Flyleaf Bio
3. Red Hand: The Ulster Colony, Constantine Fitzgibbon, Michael Joseph Ltd (1971)ISBN 7181 0881 7, Flyleaf Bio
4. Red Hand: The Ulster Colony, Constantine Fitzgibbon, Michael Joseph Ltd (1971)ISBN 7181 0881 7, Flyleaf Bio
5. Red Hand: The Ulster Colony, Constantine Fitzgibbon, Michael Joseph Ltd (1971)ISBN 7181 0881 7, Flyleaf Bio
6. Red Hand: The Ulster Colony, Constantine Fitzgibbon, Michael Joseph Ltd (1971)ISBN 7181 0881 7, Flyleaf Bio
7. http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/274260/When-the-Kissing-Had-to-Stop/overview Error - - New York Times

• Who's Who
• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography