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THE ATHLONE novelist and Irish Timesreviewer John Broderick (1924-1989) is a sadly neglected figure. Author of 12 novels and countless reviews and opinion pieces, the 20th anniversary of his death should not pass without some acknowledgment of his contribution to Irish letters. He took the public role of the writer seriously: he once stated in an interview with Julia Carlson that the Irish were “pathological” when it came to homosexuality and then took the daring decision to feature homosexual couples in several of his novels.

In The Trial of Father Dillingham(1982), for example, Maurice and Eddie look on their love “as a recompense which they owed to one another as outcasts and aliens in a hostile world”. Then in An Apology for Roses(1973) Broderick describes a steamy sexual relationship between a priest, Fr Tom Moran, and a parishioner, Marie Fogarty; a daring story-line for the time.