Philip Rooney started his professional career as a bank clerk. He had a strong penchant for horse racing and initially won a competition with a short story on the subject. When his talent for writing was discovered, he left his job at the bank and settled in Bray, Co. Wicklow. Later, he joined RTE, Ireland’s national television and radio broadcaster, and became head of script writing. He wrote a couple of well-known novels. His entry for the 1948 competition was an extract of his most successful novel Captain Boycott, which was published in Dublin in 1946. The following year, a film directed by Frank Launder and starring Stewart Granger and Kathleen Ryan, was adapted from the book. The story tells about a farmer, who is fighting his British landlord in 1880 Ireland, by social ostracism and isolation, rather than by bloody insurgency. Rooney died after long illness at the age of 51.
Ireland