Ó hEithir, Breandán (1930–90), writer, broadcaster, and journalist, was born 18 January 1930 in Cill Rónáin, Aran, Co. Galway, eldest among two sons and two daughters of Pádraig Ó hEithir of west Clare and Bríd (‘Delia’) Ní Fhlatharta of Aran, sister of Liam O'Flaherty (qv). O'Flaherty's father, Breandán's grandfather, had married the daughter of Thomas Ganly, of Ulster protestant stock, who came to Aran to build a lighthouse and a pier. Consequently, the O'Flahertys were reared bilingually in a predominantly Irish-speaking Aran, as indeed Breandán was, in the predominantly English-speaking Kilronan of the 1930s. He was equally fluent in English and Irish and was a voracious reader of a wide-ranging collection of mostly English-language books they had at home. His uncle's books were kept under lock and key, as some of them had been banned in Ireland. Successive parish priests of Aran campaigned to get Breandán's parents to leave the island and take up teaching posts in Galway, believing that if Breandán's mother left, her brother Liam would stop visiting. This merely strengthened Breandán's resolve to follow in his uncle's footsteps. He was educated at Kilronan national school, where both parents were teachers; at Coláiste Éinde, Galway; and at UCG. He finished his university course in 1952 but left without sitting his final examinations.
He worked with Comhdháil Náisiúnta na Gaeilge as a travelling salesman of Irish-language books and became a keen observer of people and events. From 1954 to 1956, at the invitation of Seán Sáirséal Ó hÉigeartaigh (qv) and his wife Bríghid, he worked as editor in their publishing company Sáirséal agus Dill. They would subsequently publish his novels. He worked as Irish-language editor of Irish Press Newspapers from 1957 to 1963, during which time he wrote a weekly column in the Sunday Press. From 1956 he wrote regularly for the monthly Comhar and was part-time editor of that publication from 1960 to 1963. His distinctive modern style of writing, together with his mixture of humour, satire, and irony, soon attracted a large readership. He was an expert scriptwriter for radio, television, and films made by Gael-Linn and others. He married (1957) Catherine von Hildebrand, a young student recently arrived in Dublin from Colombia. Her father, Franz von Hildebrand from Munich, together with her mother, Deirdre Mulcahy from Sligo, had fled Hitler's Germany and founded Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. They returned to Germany in 1963 and Breandán and Catherine, with their two children, spent a year and a half with them in Feldkirch near Freiburg. Breandán studied German and began to work on his first novel. He kept a writer's diary and wrote a regular Irish-language column for the Irish Times. From 1967 he worked as reporter and presenter on the RTÉ current affairs television programme ‘Féach’, produced by Eoghan Harris and Seán Ó Mórdha, which attracted 600,000 viewers to some of its programmes.
In 1975 the Irish-American Cultural Institute awarded him a scholarship of £2,000 to allow him to devote more time to writing. The following year his first novel, Lig sinn i gcathú (1976), loosely based on his student days in Galway, became a best-seller. He wrote and presented a television programme about himself and his uncle Liam in the RTÉ series ‘My home place’. The literary success of his uncle Liam and of Irish-language writer Máirtín Ó Cadhain (qv), while inspirational, proved daunting. In 1979, with the help of an Arts Council bursary, he spent four months in Cricklewood, London, researching and writing a novel in English called Drink the maddening wine. Alcoholism, journalism, mock patriotism, and moving statues form the central theme of the first three chapters. The novel was unfinished at the time of his death. He left RTÉ in 1983 to concentrate on writing. He and Catherine moved to Paris in 1986, where most of his second novel, Sionnach ar mo dhuán (1988), was written. Hopes of having produced his definitive novel were soon dashed by a series of devastating reviews. Other publications include a selection of his columns in Willie the Plain Pint agus an Pápa (1977); his own translation of Lig sinn i gCathu´, published as Lead us into temptation (1978); Over the bar (1984), a biographical work based on his relationship with the Gaelic Athletic Association; Ciarán Fitzgerald agus Foireann Rugbaí na hÉireann (1985); The begrudger's guide to Irish politics (1986); This is Ireland (1987); A pocket history of Ireland (1989); and reminiscences of his childhood in Aran, An Nollaig thiar (1989). An Aran reader (1991), edited with his son Ruairí, appeared posthumously, as did An Chaint sa tSráidbhaile (1991), a selection of his essays in Comhar. He visited Colombia with his wife in the summer of 1990. On his return, he was presented with the Butler literary award of $10,000 in further recognition of his writing in Irish. A month later, after a very short illness, he died of cancer in St Vincent's Hospital in Dublin on 26 October 1990, survived by his wife, Catherine, daughter Máirín, and sons Ruairí, Brian, and Aindriú. He was one of a small number of people who wrote both in Irish and in English, and was one of the finest journalists of the twentieth century.