Book Launch - The Life of Brian Cleeve

I’ve had very little time to give to this Substack lately so many of you have probably forgotten it even exists. I’m afraid my job is taking most of my time and energy at the moment. I do hope to get back to it in the near future but until then let me briefly interrupt my online absence to tell you about a book launch.

Gerry O’Neill over at the excellent

The West's Awake

Substack is hosting the launch of my father’s latest book: Television Doesn’t Like Rebels: The Life of Brian Cleeve.

It’s actually the second edition of a book he first released back in 2007 but this version is much improved. Brian Cleeve was a remarkable individual whose life story reads like a movie script. He ran away to sea while still a child, fought in WW2 and worked as a spy for British Intelligence. After this, he met and married his wife within three weeks and moved to South Africa from where he was expelled in 1954 for opposing Apartheid. He settled in Ireland where he became a leading television presenter on RTE and a best-selling novelist. In the 1970s, he underwent a profound spiritual experience that led not only to the transformation of his life but to the publishing of three books that created much debate in Ireland at the time and which he discussed on national television in an interview with Gay Byrne on the Late Late Show.

I had the opportunity to meet Brian a handful of times before his death in 2003. Despite his extreme pleasantness, I was totally intimidated by the man. Still a teenager, I struggled to converse with most people at the time so a man such as this, who had experienced so much, seen and been so much, was beyond me. So, it is through my father’s excellent book that I mainly know him. And you can too now if you wish.

The Book Launch is taking place in Shankill, Co. Dublin on Friday 22nd November from 5pm to 7pm. It is free and you can contact

J. P. Bruce

if you’d like to attend. Best wishes all.