Germany Calling: A Personal Biography of William Joyce, ‘Lord Haw-Haw’.
Dublin, New Island, 2003. 16 cm x 24 cm. XX, 300 pages, 17 illustrations. Original Hardcover with illustrated dustjacket in protective Mylar. Paint marks on dustjacket, foxing to edges, bumped corners. Otherwise in very good condition with some signs of wear.
William Brooke Joyce (24 April 1906 – 3 January 1946), nicknamed Lord Haw-Haw, was an American-born, Anglo-Irish Fascist politician and Nazi propaganda broadcaster to the United Kingdom during World War II. He was convicted of one count of high treason in 1945 and was sentenced to death. The Court of Appeal and the House of Lords upheld his conviction. He was hanged at Wandsworth Prison by Albert Pierrepoint on 3 January 1946, making him the second to last person to be executed for treason in the United Kingdom (before Theodore Schurch the following day).
William Brooke Joyce was born on Herkimer Street in Brooklyn, New York, United States. His father was Michael Francis Joyce (9 December 1866 – 19 February 1941) an Irish Catholic from a family of farmers in Ballinrobe, County Mayo, who had taken United States citizenship on 25 October 1894. His mother was Gertrude Emily Brooke, who although born in Shaw and Crompton, Lancashire, England, was from a well-off Anglican Anglo-Irish family of medical practitioners associated with County Roscommon. A few years after William’s birth, the family returned to Salthill, Galway, permanently.
Joyce attended St Ignatius College, a Jesuit school in Galway (from 1915–21). Joyce’s mother was strongly Anglocentric and despite tensions with her father for marrying a Catholic, remained staunchly Protestant and Unionist herself, hostile to Irish nationalism. Joyce’s father bought up houses and rented some to the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC). It was during the Irish War for Independence, that Joyce had his first taste in politics, he was recruited by Capt. Patrick William Keating as a courier for British Army intelligence in Galway, who were then fighting against the Irish Republican Army. He was known to have hung around with Black and Tans at Lenaboy Castle, which reportedly resulted in the Irish Republican Army dispatching a volunteer, Michael Molloy, to murder Joyce on his way home from school in December 1921, although minors were normally excluded from being executed by the IRA, usually being expelled or ostracised. Joyce reputedly survived only because his father had moved his family to another house on a different route. Capt. Keating arranged for William Joyce to be mustered into the Worcester Regiment soon after, taking him out of the dangerous situation in Ireland to Norton Barracks. A few months later he was discharged when it was found out he was underage.
Joyce remained in England and briefly attended King’s College School, Wimbledon, on a foreign exchange. His family followed him to England two years later, having backed the losing side in the conflict in Ireland. Joyce had relatives in Birkenhead, Cheshire, whom he visited on a few occasions. He then applied to Birkbeck College of the University of London, where he entered the Officer Training Corps. At Birkbeck, he obtained a first-class honours degree. He also developed an interest in Fascism, and he worked with (but never joined) the British Fascists of Rotha Lintorn-Orman.
On 22 October 1924, while stewarding a meeting in support of Jack Lazarus (the Conservative Party candidate for Lambeth North in the general election), Joyce was attacked by Communists and received a deep razor slash that ran across his right cheek. It left a permanent scar which ran from the earlobe to the corner of the mouth. While he claimed that his attackers were Jewish, his first wife said that “it wasn’t a Jewish Communist who disfigured him …. He was knifed by an Irish woman.” (Wikipedia)
Mary Kenny (born 4 April 1944, Dublin, Ireland) is an Irish author, broadcaster, playwright and journalist. She is a frequent columnist for the Irish Independent. She was a founding member of the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement. She has modified the radical ideas of her past, but not rejected feminist principles.
Mary Kenny grew up in Sandymount. (Wikipedia)
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