John Broderick (1924-1989) was a novelist, critic and patron of the arts, celebrated for his unsparing portraits of Irish provincial life. The only child of a bakery family, he lived for periods in Paris, forming friendships with writers such as Julien Green, Gore Vidal and Truman Capote. His debut novel  The Pilgrimage (1961) was banned in Ireland but appeared in the U.S. as  The Chameleons, establishing his reputation. A pioneering writer of queer Irish lives, Broderick was contributor to  The Irish Times, and was elected to the Irish Academy of Letters in 1968. He died in Bath in 1989, bequething his estate to support the arts of his home town of Athlone.