Playwright and author Lee Dunne dies after battle with Alzheimer’s
THE well-known Irish author and playwright Lee Dunne has died after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease at the age of 86.
Christopher Lee Dunne was born on December 21, 1934, the fourth of seven children born to Mick and Katy Dunne of Mount Pleasant Buildings, a tenement slum in the area known as ‘The Hill’ in Ranelagh.
His best known book, Goodbye to the Hill, was published in 1965 and went on to sell over a million copies. The classic book was subsequently adapted into a long-running play in Dublin.
Houghton Mifflin in New York acquired the US rights and brought Dunne over to the States to publicise the book. His second book, A Bed in the Sticks, was published in 1968.
Speaking of his father’s early childhood, Dunne’s son Peter said: “Born into what was at that time a place of appalling poverty and squalor, Dunne quickly learned to live on his wits. He began working on a milk round at the age of five, devotedly offering up his meagre earnings to his mother for the housekeeping jar.
“Later he would also get a paper round as well as a job as a delivery boy for a local butcher.
“Yet in spite of these tough circumstances, Dunne always remembered his upbringing fondly, as a time when people looked out for one another.
“His particular joy was the cinema where Roy Rogers soon became his personal hero. His father worked for the ESB at Poolbeg Station while his beloved mother, Katy, did her best to keep the family fed and clothed.”
Dunne’s life and career also incorporated Irish literary history in the 20th century. He knew many of the greatest Irish writers of our time and had much to say about Brendan Behan and Flann O’Brien. Dunne was also a talented singer and he worked with Luke Kelly.
A revival of Goodbye to the Hill is planned for 2022 with a script by bestselling Irish author Eoin Colfer.
Among Dunne’s works was RTÉ Radio 1 drama series Harbour Hotel, the long-running soap set in the fictional fishing village of Kilmahon, which ran from 1975. He wrote around 2,000 radio scripts and plays for RTÉ during the course of his prolific career.
In an interview with the Bray People in 2004, he was asked how he would like to be remembered as a writer.
‘I’d like it if people thought that I was true to the spirit of Dublin in my work, that I told a good anecdote, and that I gave good value for money,” he said.
Dunne is survived by his wife Maura and his children from his first marriage, Sarah, Peter and Jonathan.