Constantine Fitzgibbon

Robert Louis Constantine Lee-Dillon Fitzgibbon (Massachusetts 8 June 1919 - Dublin 25 March 1983) was a 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, Commander Francis Lee-Dillon FitzGibbon, RN, was Irish, his mother, Georgette Folsom, from Lenox, Mass, USA. He married his wife Marjorie (née Steele) in 1967. He had one daughter, named Oonagh, born February 6, 1968 for whom he wrote the book Teddy in the Tree in 1977. By a previous marriage to Marion (née Gutmann) he had one son, born 1961. He was half-brother of Louis Fitzgibbon, author of Katyn. The family resided in Killiney in south County Dublin.

Education

Wellington College; University of Munich; University of Paris. Fitzgibbon attended Exeter College, Oxford with a modern languages scholarship but left without a degree just before the outbreak of World War II in 1939.^[1]

Career

Fitzgibbon served in the British Army, in the Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry, from 1939 to 1942, before transferring to the United States Army as a staff officer in military intelligence from 1942-46. He worked as a schoolmaster for a short time in Bermuda from 1946–47,^[1] at Saltus Grammar School, then as an 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.^[1]

Fitzgibbon has written a number of books, including nine novels. One of the recurring subjects in his work was Nazi Germany.^[1]

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 Theatre 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.^[1]

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)
• Watcher in Florence (1959) The Vine Press
• 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 Encyclopædia 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.^[2]

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d e f} Constantine Fitzgibbon, Red Hand: the Ulster Colony, Michael Joseph Ltd (1971) ISBN 7181 0881 7; flyleaf biography
2. ^ Error - - New York Times

• Who's Who
• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Persondata
Name	Fitzgibbon, Constantine
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	8 June 1919
Place of birth
Date of death	25 March 1983
Place of death