Hubert Butler was born in Kilkenny on 23 October 1900 and educated in England at Charterhouse and St John's College, Oxford. After working with the Irish County Libraries in the mid-1920s, he travelled extensively, teaching English at Alexandria and Leningrad. In 1934 he went to Yugoslavia on a three-year scholarship from the London School of Slavonic Studies. His translations published at this time were from the Russian: 'Leonid Leonov's The Thief' (1931) and Chekhov's 'The Cherry Orchard' (1934), staged by his brother-in-law Tyrone Guthrie at London's Old Vic in 1933. When his father died in 1941 he came home to Maidenhall in Co. Kilkenny, reviving the Kilkenny Archaeological Society in 1944 after a lapse of fifty years. In 1954 he organized the Kilkenny Debates, staged annually until 1962. In 1967, with Lord Dunboyne, he founded the Butler Society, editing its Journal until his death on 5 January 1991. As a market gardener, essayist and historian, his published works include 'Ten Thousand Saints: A Study in Irish & European Origins' (self-published in 1972; reissued by Lilliput, with an introduction from Alan Harrison, in 2011). A succession of prize- winning volumes then appeared: 'Escape from the Anthill' (1985), 'The Children of Drancy' (1988), 'Grandmother and Wolfe Tone' (1990) and 'In the Land of Nod' (1996) - winning him a growing international reputation, attested to by publications abroad. These include a single volume, selected by Roy Foster, 'The Sub-Prefect Should Have Held His Tongue' (Allen Lane and Penguin Books, London, 1990); a French translation, 'L'Envahisseur est venu en pantoufles', prefaced by Joseph Brodsky (Anatolia, Paris, 1995); a further selection by Elisabeth Sifton, 'Independent Spirit' (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1996); a two-volume selection, each introduced by John Banville: 'The Eggman and the Fairies: Irish Essays' and 'The Invader Wore Slippers: European Essays' (Notting Hill Editions, London, 2012).
