Obituary: Jennifer Johnston (1930-25th February 2025)
26th February, 2025
The Arts Council of Northern Ireland has learned with sadness of the death, aged 95, of celebrated Irish novelist and playwright, Jennifer Johnston.
Born in Dublin to the playwright Denis Johnston and the actor Shelah Richards, Jennifer Johnston moved to Derry-Londonderry in the 1970s. She won the Evening Standard Award for Best First Novel for ‘The Captain and the Kings’ (1972) and would go on to publish many popular and highly-acclaimed novels, including the Booker Prize-shortlisted ‘Shadows on our Skin’ (1977), which explores the relationship between a Catholic schoolboy and his Protestant teacher in modern Derry; and ‘The Old Jest’ (1979), about the Irish War of Independence, which won the Whitbread Award and was later filmed as ‘The Dawning’, starring Anthony Hopkins.
Other novels include ‘The Invisible Worm’ (1991), dealing with the subject of sexual abuse, which was shortlisted for the Daily Express Best Book of the Year Award; ‘The Gingerbread Woman’ (2000), about a widower who has lost his wife and child to terrorists; ‘This Is Not a Novel’ (2002); ‘Grace and Truth’ (2005); and ‘Foolish Mortals’ (2007). Her final novel, ‘Naming the Stars’, a novella of love, loss and memory, was published in 2015.
Her best-known work, ‘How Many Miles to Babylon’ (1974), examines the complex friendship between an officer, the aristocratic son of an Anglo-Irish household, and a soldier, a worker on the estate, both serving in the trenches of the First World War. The novel was adapted for television by the BBC in 1982 and featured a television debut by Daniel Day-Lewis. It was later adapted for the stage in 2005.
A celebrated playwright, Jennifer Johnston’s plays included ‘The Nightingale and Not the Lark’ (1980), and winner of the Giles Cooper Award, ‘O Ananias, Azarias and Misael’ (first published in ‘Best Radio Plays of 1989’, 1990).
Jennifer Johnston was a member of Aosdána. She was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Irish Book Awards in 2012, and was one of the writers nominated in 2014 for the position of first Irish Laureate for Fiction. Her novels have been translated into several languages and are published in many countries.