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.'
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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.