The Wartime Broadcasts of Francis Stuart

Synopsis

In 1940, shortly after the outbreak of World War II, Francis Stuart (1902-2000) moved from County Wicklow to Berlin, where he accepted a university position. Stuart remained in the Third Reich for the duration of the war and between March 1942 and Februrary 1944, he made over 100 broadcasts on German radio to Ireland. The German sojourn and broadcasts have been at the heart of the long-running controversy over Stuart, and yet remarkably little is known about him. This work prints the complete surviving transcripts of Stuart's broadcasts, as preserved in Irish and British archives. The transcripts reveal that contrary to the myth that he was not interested in politics, Stuart followed the progress of the war very closely and was particularly attuned to its political implications for Ireland. Early confidence that a German victory would lead to a united Ireland gave way, once the war turned against the Reich, to a more measured, but always intensely anti-Allied, view of the war and Ireland's relation to it. The editor's introduction places the broadcasts in the contexts of German propaganda to Ireland, Irish neutrality, and Stuart's literary career. It shows that Stuart's political interests and commitments were strong and enduring and intimately tied up with his creative work. The introduction suggests that Stuart's achivement as a writer can never be adequately assessed until the nature of the relationship between his novels and his politics is confronted squarely.