'Famous name", growled Charlie Haughey in his gravelly voice when introduced to Brendan Bracken, who died at his home in Dalkey on December 12th, aged 72. The famous name was, of course, that of Brendan's uncle, Winston Churchill's loyal henchman and founding father of the modern Financial Times, whose biography I wrote 40 years ago.
Through that link Brendan and I formed a long friendship for which I am deeply grateful. But we went back even further. Brendan’s father Peter was at Belvedere with mine. Joining the Garda Síochána at the foundation of the State, Peter was chief superintendent in Galway with a wife and young family before he was 30. Then all went wrong. He got into debt and was dismissed. He deserted his young family. In 1939 he joined the British army as a private and served throughout the second World War.
Encouraged by his famous younger brother, who had supported the family financially, Peter was reconciled with his wife on his return. Brendan, born in 1947 in Galway where his father was steward on an estate, was the child of this reconciliation, which sadly did not last.
Brendan’s mother continued to be supported by the man they never met, who set up a trust to keep things going after his death in 1958. Through the good offices of his elder brother, a Cistercian monk, Brendan, often called Buddy, was at school in Roscrea. He was happy there and treasured his memory of the sermons of its celebrated abbot Dom Eugene Boylan.
The Earl of Longford, who rated the elder Brendan the most remarkable man he had ever met, responded readily to a request from young Brendan’s mother to nominate her son for a clerkship in the National Bank, of which he had been chairman. Brendan moved on from that to press relations posts in the IDA and in Irish Life, where he promoted the Pensioner of the Year Award. He founded his own press relations agency BrackenPR in 1991.
Brendan may have been the nephew of the spin doctor who managed the media for Churchill but he had none of the aggression or noisy flamboyance of his uncle. Unspectacular efficiency was his hallmark, appreciated by valuable clients such as the University of Limerick, Fás and Bank of Scotland (Ireland). For recreation he walked mountains with his friends in “The Trackers” and swam in the sea daily. He was also a voracious reader.
He had been busy with his young family when my biography appeared but in later years the elder Brendan Bracken became an absorbing interest. In 1995 he was feted when I spoke at Sedbergh School in Yorkshire, where his uncle had enrolled himself for a term 75 years before, posing as an orphaned Australian; in later life, as Viscount Bracken, he became chairman of the governors and is commemorated by a statue in the grounds.
Brendan and I collaborated at events in Tipperary and at Churchill College Cambridge, of which his uncle was a benefactor. Once, when Brendan introduced himself to a journalist at the Financial Times saying "I'm Brendan Bracken", his interlocutor replied: "No you're not; he's dead."
English people who knew the elder Brendan expected the younger one to be less understated and to have a great mop of hair that could have been red. Only in his capacity for friendship and love of good writing did my friend Brendan resemble his famous uncle.
Talking with pride of his uncle and understanding of his father, Brendan was the star of a television documentary produced some years ago on the uncle’s life. Not everything in the documentary was accurate but Brendan agreed with me that this was fitting in a way as the elder Brendan was a bit of a fantasist himself. We had many laughs together.
Brendan looked more like his grandfather JK Bracken, the Templemore Fenian who helped found the GAA, and was delighted that the Templemore club called itself "The JK Brackens". As the last surviving grandson of JK, he was pained that Thomas Kilroy's play Double Cross, revived last year, alleged, contrary to all the evidence, that JK beat his wife.
I have known few fathers as delighted with his children as Brendan. Claire, lectures on literature in an American university, Ali is a journalist in Dublin and Sam teaches English in Korea.
Diagnosed with incipient Alzheimer’s a couple of years ago, Brendan dreaded being a burden to his beloved wife Bernadine to whom he felt he owed the happiness of his life. He jested that he welcomed cancer as a friend and retained until the end remarkable good humour.
Watching this truly good man brave his last illness I was reminded of a letter Beaverbrook wrote about his uncle sixty years ago: “Brendan is dying; he has all the strength and courage of the heroes of his race.”