Steve MacDonogh:THE WRITER and publisher Steve MacDonogh, who has died aged 61, founded Brandon Books and was a former chairman of the Irish Writers' Co-operative. A firm believer in freedom of expression, one newspaper described him as fighting a one-man "war against censorship".
Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams, one of Brandon’s authors, said MacDonogh’s “contribution to Ireland, the arts and to the world of publishing and free speech was immense”.
Writer Emer Martin described him as a “maverick and a global thinker, the most committed publisher I ever worked with”.
Born in Dublin in 1949, he was one of three children of Jack MacDonogh, a Church of Ireland clergyman, and his wife Barbara (née Sullivan). Brian Faulkner, a former prime minister of Northern Ireland, was a distant cousin.
Educated at Marlborough College, Wiltshire, he was a classmate of Princess Anne’s husband-to-be Mark Philips. At York University he studied English literature, wrote poetry and edited a literary magazine Cosmos. He graduated in 1971.
In the United States, he worked and travelled on the rock/poetry circuit before returning to Ireland where he became a publishers’ agent. In 1976, with Leland Bardwell, Desmond Hogan, Neil Jordan and others he set up the Irish Writers’ Co-operative.
Hogan's The Ikon Makerand Jordan's Night in Tunisiawere two early successes, and hardback editions of both books were published in the UK.
MacDonogh became interested in freedom of expression issues, and commissioned non-fiction titles. However, some members were unhappy with the change of direction signalled by the publication of Nuclear Ireland, by Matthew Hussey and Carole Craig, and Nell McCafferty's The Armagh Women.
He parted company with the co- op, having founded Brandon Books in 1982, taking some writers with him. Based in Dingle, Co. Kerry, Brandon launched into publishing with Anthony Cronin’s study of Irish literature in English Heritage Now and the autobiography of the Glencolumbkille priest Fr James McDyer.
Two books dealing with Northern Ireland attracted controversy. These were Falls Memoriesby Gerry Adams and The Longest Warby American journalist Kevin Kelley, perceived to be sympathetic to the IRA's campaign.
Some booksellers refused to stock Adams’s book, but MacDonogh reported an “excellent response” from the public. He faced other obstacles on becoming the republican leader’s publisher.
“English and Irish fascists went into the bookshops and carved swastikas on the covers of Adams’s books,” he said.
He believed it was important that paramilitary voices, loyalist and republican, should not be silenced by the State. “The public needs to know what is happening,” he said.
Openly supportive of the IRA’s aims, he said he could not condemn what it was doing. However, he was not in favour of the organisation’s methods and instead proposed a campaign of mass civil disobedience.
In publishing British Intelligence and Covert Actionin 1984, he ran up against the British ministry of defence, which wanted the book banned. He managed to get it into the shops only to find that his British co-publisher had gone broke – without contributing to the costs.
Two years later, the British attorney general claimed that another Brandon book One Girl's War, a Memoir of Life in the Secret Service, threatened UK national security. An attempt to stop its Irish publication failed, but British distribution was delayed for six years.
Brandon published Joanne Hayes's My Story, her account of the Kerry Babies case. It sold well but attracted a libel writ from three gardaí, which cost £100,000 in damages and costs and almost bankrupted the company.
MacDonogh left Brandon in 1997 following a disagreement with his business partner. He continued publishing, under the new Mount Eagle imprint, and relaunched Brandon in 1998.
Brandon’s authors include Ken Bruen, Paul Charles and Alice Taylor, and its output includes new editions of works by Walter Macken.
Rejecting the charge that Irish publishers were parochial, in 2007 MacDonogh pointed to the fact that his lists included writers from Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and the US.
He was the author of a history of the Dingle peninsula, a book on folk customs and three collections of poetry. He also edited The Rushdie Letters: Freedom to Speak, Freedom to Write.His most recent book Barack Obama: The Road from Moneygallwas published earlier this year.
A former president of Clé, the Irish Book Publishers’ Association, he was instrumental in developing the Irish presence at the Frankfurt book fair. He is survived by his wife Meryem and their daughter Lilya, his mother Barbara, sister Deirdre and brother Terry.
Steve MacDonogh: born September 3rd, 1949; died November 17th, 2010.