Word: borstal
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...Behan Borstal...
Died. Brendan Francis Behan, 41, professional Irish tosspot and boyo terrible, semiprofessional writer of wit and distinction, a pudgy, rumpled, onetime juvenile terrorist for the I.R.A. who staggered into the limelight in 1958 with his scabrous reform-school memoir, Borstal Boy, two brilliantly nihilistic plays of Dublin low jinks, The Quare Fellow and The Hostage, but despite faint, repeated vows to stay "off the gargle" subsequently squandered his fireworks in binges from Los Angeles to London; of diabetes, jaundice and acute alcoholism; in Dublin...
...Ragman's Daughter is a finely machined narrative that illustrates the virtues and defects of Sillitoe's work. A young spiv describes his lovely nasty life in the golden months when he is headed for Borstal (reform school) but has not yet arrived there. Love intrudes, in the form of the nubile daughter of the local ragman (U.S. "junk dealer"), a rich man who drives a Jaguar and provides his daughter with a chestnut filly, which she rides about the slum. She and our hero fall to stealing things-just for kicks in her case. Their shared criminality...
...Runner. A druggist's son, he was sent to "a terrible, horrible off-white sort of public school" which was evacuated to the Lake District during the war. There discipline slipped away to nought, and Richardson spent much of his time wandering the countryside alone, much like the Borstal boy in the film taking his long training runs...
Expanded from a short story by Alan Sillitoe, Loneliness recites the lugubrious case history of a mill-town ragamuffin (Tom Courtenay) who winds up as a Borstal boy. As he reaches reform school, the hero is met by "the Guv'nor" (Michael Redgrave). "You're here to work hard and play hard," his nibs announces with an intolerably self-righteous smirk. "We're here to try and make something...