Maeve Binchy Dies Best Selling Author
Maeve Binchy dies Best selling author, Maeve Binchy, one of Ireland's most popular and successful novelists, has died after a short illness.
Author Maeve Binchy dies at 72, Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny has led tributes to popular novelist Maeve Binchy, who has died at the age of 72.
The best-selling author died peacefully in hospital on Monday with her husband, children's writer Gordon Snell, by her side.
Binchy penned 16 novels and sold more than 40 million books worldwide during her career.
Mr Kenny said Ireland had lost a national treasure and offered his deepest sympathies, on behalf of the Government and the Irish people, to her family.
"Across Ireland and the world people are mourning and celebrating Maeve Binchy," he said. "She is a huge loss wherever stories of love, hope, generosity and possibility are read and cherished. Today, as a nation, we are thankful for and proud of the writer and the woman Maeve Binchy."
Several of Binchy's works were adapted for screen, including Circle Of Friends, The Lilac Bus and Tara Road.
Oscar-winning actress Brenda Fricker, who starred in a number of the productions, said of Binchy: "She was charming, intelligent, warm, generous in her time, with her effort, with her work. I just had the greatest of respect for her because she suffered badly from arthritis, and she had a lot of pain, and she never complained, you know."
Born in Dalkey, Co Dublin, Binchy studied at University College Dublin before starting her career as a teacher. She went on to become a journalist at the Irish Times. She moved to England, where she became London editor with the paper and met her husband.
The couple continued to live in Dalkey, a few hundred yards from the house where she grew up with her parents.
Binchey's popular early collections of humorous short stories were based in London and Dublin but her first novel, Light A Penny Candle, became a best-seller when published in 1982 and the author, who was considered a true Irish storyteller, made Britain's top 10 most popular writers and the New York Times' Best-seller List.
via Yahoo
