Constantine Fitzgibbon

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

Birth, family and marriage

His father was Northern 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; Exeter College, Oxford.

Career

Settled in England before moving to Ireland. Historian and Cookery 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. Schoolmaster, Saltus Grammar School, Bermuda, 1946-47; then independent writer.

His play, The Devil at Work was produced by the Abbey in 1971.

Member Irish Academy of Letters. FRSL; Fellow, Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, 1966.

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 edn (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)
• 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^[1].

[edit References

• Who's Who
• Oxford Dictionary of National Biograph