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Ronan Bennett (1956 - ) is an Irish novelist and screenwriter. He was born and raised in a Catholic family in Belfast, Northern Ireland. A Belfast IRA member in his youth, he was still at school when he was convicted and imprisoned in Long Kesh prison in 1974 for the murder of Royal Ulster Constabulary Inspector William Elliott. His conviction was overturned on appeal in 1975. He then moved to London. In 1978 he was arrested for conspiracy to cause explosions and spent 16 months in prison on remand. Bennett conducted his own defence, and he and his co-defendants were acquitted in 1979. He studied history at King's College, receiving a first class honours degree. In 1987, he completed his Ph.D. in history from King's.

Bennett has published both works of fiction and non-fiction. He has written five novels, the last serialised in the Guardian. It was his third novel The Catastrophist that really brought him into the public eye. Set in the Belgian Congo just before independence, with the rise and fall of Patrice Lumumba as political backdrop, The Catastrophist is the story of a doomed love affair between novelist James Gillespie and a fiery idealistic journalist, Inès. Critics hailed the novel, which drew inevitable comparisons to Graham Greene, Joseph Conrad and John LeCarre's African novel, The Constant Gardener. It was nominated for the Whitbread Award in 1998.

The Catastrophist is a bleak book about the impossibility of love and of political peace in certain circumstances. The central character, James, (who changes his name from the Irish 'Seamus' to the Anglo form when he moves to London) follows Inès to the Congo as the Belgian colons are preparing to leave and the Communist sympathiser Lumumba is about to be killed by a rival tribe vying for control (with clandestine US support). James writes some pieces for the Observer in London as the political situation gets much worse, and he becomes more involved because Inès herself is heavily engagé, reporting for the Italian Communist Party newspaper.

Their sexual relationship is handled with great frankness, and their love appears very real, but she moves away from him, into the cause, and takes a young African supporter of Lumumba as a lover. She asks James to help them escape as their lives become threatened by a dangerous CIA man and the black tribal group he supports. Despite his own bitterness about losing her, James refuses to tell the American and his African co-conspirators where Inès and her lover are hiding. He is jailed and badly beaten, but eventually the CIA man believes his story that he does not know where Inès is hiding, and lets him go. Inès consoles him with one final sexual act before escaping with her African lover.

The sub-text is about James' impossible task in holding a woman who throws herself into a cause that the detached novelist cannot join. There is considerable poignancy in the scenes where he realises that she has gone for good, and no longer loves him.

Bennett's fourth novel, Havoc, in its Third Year, was published in 2004. It is a dark tale of Puritan fanaticism, set in a town in northern England in the 1630s, in the decade before Cromwell and his Roundheads took over the kingdom, closed the theatres, and pillaged Irish towns. Havoc was also well-received in the press.

Bennett was an uncredited co-author of Stolen Years, the prison memoir of Paul Hill, one of the Guildford Four who were wrongfully convicted in 1975 for the Guildford and Woolwich pub bombings the previous year. Bennett has also written several acclaimed screenplays for film and television, among them The Hamburg Cell and the controversial Rebel Heart. He contributes regularly to the British and Irish press.

In 2006, Bennett's new novel Zugzwang, was published week-by-week in the British Sunday newspaper The Observer. The novel was written in weekly instalments with new chapters being submitted to the newspaper close to publication date. Each chapter was accompanied by illustations created by British artist Marc Quinn.

Ronan Bennett lives in London with his family. His partner is the assistant editor of The Guardian, Georgina Henry.

Bibliography

Fiction

The Second Prison (1991) - shortlisted for the 1991 Irish Times/Aer Lingus prize.
Overthrown by Strangers (1992)
The Catastrophist (1998) - shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel Award.
Havoc, in its Third Year (2004) - winner of the Hughes & Hughes/Sunday Independent Irish Novel of the Year award.

Non-fiction

Stolen Years: Before and After Guildford (with Paul Hill, 1990)
Fire and Rain (broadcast on Radio 4, 1994)

Feature films

A Further Gesture, aka The Break (1997)
Lucky Break (2001)
Face (1997)
The Hamburg Cell (1997)

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