Oliver St John Gogarty

Born in Dublin, Oliver St John Gogarty studied at the Royal University Dublin and later at the Medical School in Trinity College. His reputation as a wit and bon viveur has been immortalised in the character Buck Mulligan in James Joyce's Ulysses. Indeed, Gogarty briefly shared his accommodation in the Martello Tower in Sandycove with Joyce and an English friend in 1904. His poetry collections are An Offering of Swans (1923), Wild Apples (1928) and Selected Poems (1933). Gogarty is, however, best remembered for his memoir, As I was going Down Sackville Street (1937) and the ensuing libel suit in which Samuel Beckett gave evidence against him. His second memoir, Tumbling in the Hay, appeared in 1939 and an autobiography, It Isn't that Time of Year at All, in 1954. Gogarty, who was appointed Senator of the Irish Free State in 1922, narrowly escaped an attempt on his life. He left Ireland in 1939 and died in New York in 1957.