The late author Gordon Snell was “endlessly generous” and “a force for good,” beloved by his family and friends, his funeral has heard.
Snell, who was married to fellow author Maeve Binchy for 35 years until her death in 2012, died peacefully on April 29th, aged 93, at the home where the couple worked together in Dalkey, Co Dublin.
Snell’s funeral service in The Victorian Chapel, Mount Jerome on Tuesday, heard family and friends recall his “great laugh,” his fondness for Paddington Bear, and how his family determined “he was Paddington Bear”.
Snell’s nephew, Chris Binchy, said his uncle was a “force for good. He was endlessly generous. He had a great laugh, the actual physical laugh, which was never far away and made you glad to be around it”, he said.
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Snell was born in Singapore and went to school in Australia, before moving to England with his parents after the second World War, where he attended the University of Oxford. He published his first book for children, The King of Quizzical Island, in 1978. He followed it up with Amy’s Wonderful Nest, Tina and the Tooth Fairy and The Supermarket Ghost, among others.
For decades, Snell and his wife wrote together in their home, critiquing each other’s work and celebrating each other’s successes.
Sarah Binchy, Snell’s niece, said: “Gordon always said how lucky he was to have found such happiness with Maeve.”
She recalled how “Gordon loved the Paddington films, and when he and my parents saw Paddington 2 together, my father, Billy, came out with the epiphany. He said: ‘Gordon is Paddington’.”
She described him as “someone kind, gentle, optimistic,” who saw “only the best in others”.
Snell’s friend, the author Henrietta McKervey, who won the first memorial UCD Maeve Binchy Travel Award, described him as “clever, generous, witty, and compassionate.”
“He had an enormous capacity for friendship”, she said.
Another friend, the literary agent Christine Green, told the mourners that Snell and Binchy dedicated their books only to each other. Green read from some of Maeve’s books’ dedications, each one unique.
When Binchy died, Snell was distraught but a “wonderful supporter and a guardian of her life’s work. It’s impossible to exaggerate how key Gordon and Maeve were to each other’s success”, she said.
“Every writer has a team of people behind them, but none could ever be as important as Gordon was to Maeve and Maeve to Gordon,” she said.
