Kenny Mary - Germany calling: a personal biography of William Joyce, Lord Haw Haw

Acclaim for Germany Calling

This book is a classic. [Mary Kennys] fascination with Joyces story has produced a book and I know no higher praise for a biography which is in the same league as AJ Symons The Quest for Corvo. Mary Kennys book made me laugh aloud, and weep, and think. It is sympathetic, in all the right ways, to the monster it portrays.

A. N. Wilson, Evening Standard

Germany Calling by Mary Kenny presents a wealth of fascinating new material a fascinating, vital account of Joyces nasty, short and brutish life.

Jewish Chronicle

Mary Kenny is the perfect biographer for this bizarre figure. [Joyce] was a clever man who could have been a don. Kenny shows, though Joyces flights of political opinion soared to heights of rancour and bad taste, his core beliefs were not so different to many Irishmen of the period.

The Irish Examiner

Mary Kenny has written an absorbingly elegant study. To all [Joyces] shabby dreams, loyalties and cruelties Kenny brings both compassion and a clear mind. A biography whose evenhanded beauty of expression combines Irish gravity with Irish spark.

The Guardian

Popular hate figures are not easy subjects for the biographer. Rebecca West, who sat through Joyces trial for high treason in 1945, dismissed him as a queer little Irish peasant who had gone to some pains to make the worst of himself. In Germany Calling Mary Kenny has painted a more rounded portrait of Lord Haw-Haw, whose propaganda broadcasts for the Third Reich brought him to the scaffold at Wandsworth.

The Times

Kenny presents for us an appalling man from an appalling time, but such is her narrative skill that we never entirely hate him, seeing in him the possibilities of distinction that were almost obliterated when he went over to the dark side.

The Sunday Times

A terrific read, and very highly recommended.

Kennys.ie

Mary Kenny has done her research thoroughly in Ireland, England, Germany and the USA. Her Germany Calling is a triumph of enquiry.

Books Ireland

Kenny makes plausible the idea that a young Irishman with a fine intellect but not much common-sense might fall for the idea, peddled by right-wing English newspapers like the Morning Post, that Irish nationalism was a Jewish Communist plot. Kenny has covered the Irish aspect of Joyce well.

The Tablet

Mary Kenny, with the aid of intelligence files released by the British government and other fresh material, has given flesh to [Joyces] story. Mary Kenny says she saw in Joyce some of her own flaws It is, perhaps, this sympathy that has enabled her to produce such a convincing and gripping biography.

Sunday Independent

No stranger to controversy herself, Mary Kenny does an outstanding job. Highly recommended.

Evening Echo

Mary Kenny has worked tirelessly to present us with a fascinating portrait of one of Galways most infamous sons, whose sneering jibes on Berlin radio during World War II, as Hitlers chief English-language announcer, earned him the nom de guerre Lord Haw-Haw. The real strength of Kennys book is that it contains a wealth of detail regarding Joyces Irish roots, which no earlier studies managed to achieve.

Sunday Business Post

Germany Calling is undoubtedly Kennys best work. Comprehensive and authoritative, it nonetheless manages to be as impelling in its sweeping mastery of material as a thriller. The fact is that Germany Calling is a triumph. This sensitive and entertaining biography is the crowning achievement of an unorthodox writers career.

Irish Independent

Germany Calling is a first-class biography [Kennys] story of Joyces younger brother Quentin and his forlorn attempt to save [Joyce] is one of the biographys most touching moments. A fantastic and stunning book.

Irish-i

The British government was on shaky legal ground in hanging American Joyce, but in those days better men were being executed for lesser sins. He was a wretched misfit, who allowed his intelligence to be perverted for the service of monsters.

The Sunday Telegraph

This life of Lord Haw-Haw is an unexpected triumph she achieves the impossible: making Joyce a more likeable figure than hitherto, but also a more impressive one.

The Catholic Herald

[A] very readable and thoughtful account, with a useful outline of fascisms contemporary appeal as the modernising Third Way [Kenny] is surely right to query the legitimacy of his hanging.

The Daily Telegraph

Reading this book aroused in my mind thoughts about the nature of individual identity, the claims of nationality, and the meaning of treason.

The Irish Catholic

Mary Kenny has succeeded in maintaining a high level of interest throughout the narrative, giving William Joyces romantic and marital adventures the prominence that they played in his life. He had a cavalier attitude to his two wives, Hazel and Margaret, but in his own rather odd way he loved them both.

Emigrant.ie

In Germany Calling Mary Kenny certainly recognizes the need to dig deeper and more extensively. She is particularly effective in reconstructing Joyces early years in Ireland [and] writes fluently on the personal tribulations that followed his capture by British troops in 1945.

Times Literary Supplement

Kenny argues, rightly that Joyces fate was undeserved: his real offence was to have acquired his nickname, and the legendary repute that went with it. He hadnt been responsible for a single British death, but found himself at the centre of a show trial, which soon afterwards was regarded with some embarrassment. It was essentially a matter of revenge This is the most thorough study of Joyces personal life that is likely to be written.

London Review of Books

This elegant book is a model of its kind and an intriguing story is gracefully told.

Ireland of the Welcomes

GERMANY CALLING
________________

Mary Kenny has been a newspaper journalist and columnist since the 1960s, contributing to, among others, the Irish Independent, the Guardian, The Times, the Daily Mail, The Spectator and the Irish Catholic.

She was born in Dublin, the youngest of four, and, after a period in France, became a reporter on the London Evening Standard. A founder-member of an Irish feminist movement in Dublin, she graduated with a degree in French studies at Birkbeck College, London University in the 1990s. In 1997 she published a social history of Ireland, Goodbye to Catholic Ireland.

Mary Kenny is married to the writer Richard West and they have two adult sons. She lives between England and Ireland.

GERMANY
CALLING

MARY KENNY

Copyright 2003 Mary Kenny

GERMANY CALLING

A BIOGRAPHY OF WILLIAM JOYCE, LORD HAW-HAW

First published 2003

by New Island

2 Brookside

Dundrum Road

Dublin 14

This edition published 2004

www.newisland.ie

The author has asserted her moral rights.

ISBN 1 904301 59 2

Lines from Remorse For Intemperate Speech by W. B. Yeats reprinted by kind permission of A. P. Watt Ltd on behalf of Michael B. Yeats