Freddy Anderson (1922 – 2001)

Author, playwright, poet and socialist

Freddy Anderson was born on September 11th 1922 in Lower Main Street, Ballybay, in County Monaghan. He was one of four children of Fred and Minnie Anderson.

Beginning his formal education at the Cistercian College in Roscrea and the Christian Brothers School in Monaghan he progressed to University College Dublin to study architecture. However, he soon found himself much more stimulated by his membership of the Dublin Writers’ Circle. He eventually left Dublin for Belfast, the city of his father’s birth, and worked in the shipyards prior to joining the RAF on the outbreak of war. He served in Crossmaglen and then Burma.

After the war he moved to Glasgow and began his career as a journalist, then as a writer. Initially broadcasting his short stories via the BBC and working as an occasional reporter for ‘The Irish Post’, over the next half decade he would write six plays, one novel (and its stage adaptation), a vast plethora of poems, as well as countless and varied articles for newspapers and journals. He was presented with an ‘Irish Post’ Award in 1991 and a society of British Authors Award in 1992.

Freddy married Isobel Foy, of County Mayo, in 1951. They had three children – Paul, Isobel and Dermot.

After the passing of his wife in 2000, Freddy himself died on December 10th 2001.

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