Thomas Kilroy

1934–2023

Irish playwright, novelist and academic from Callan, County Kilkenny. He studied at University College Dublin and worked as play editor at the Abbey Theatre before becoming Professor of English at University College Galway in 1978, a post he left in 1989 to write full time. His plays include The Death and Resurrection of Mr Roche, Talbot’s Box, Double Cross and The Secret Fall of Constance Wilde. He died in December 2023, aged 89. The Big Chapel, his only novel, won the Guardian Fiction Prize and was shortlisted for the 1971 Booker Prize.

Timeline of Thomas Kilroy’s life

Works

• The Big Chapel (1971)

Prizes

• The Big Chapel — The Booker Prize 1971: Shortlist