Gilford native and internationally renowned New York Times best selling author Herbie Brennan has died having penned 116 books

Aged 83, the Gilford native was a prolific writer having penned a staggering 116 books, under the name JH Brennan, with sales of more than 10 million copies in 54 countries. His ‘teenage’ novel Faerie Wars achieved the New York Times best-seller status in the US. Indeed the New York Times said: "Herbie Brennan: A master of the hairpin turn, leading readers in one direction and suddenly reversing their expectations.… Brennan excels at maintaining suspense.”

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High praise for a man who, in his childhood at Gilford Primary School, felt bullied and under appreciated. A native of the Co Down town, he recalled in a News Letter interview that it was ‘a little mill village with small emotional boundaries and a limited tolerance of anything that didn't fit the conventional belief patterns’. He said: "I remember being told firmly that man would never get to the moon and it was stupid to believe that he might. It was wartime with all the resultant shortages. Nobody had enough to eat. On the personal front, things got worse after my father died when I was four. I was bullied at school and terrorised by the headmaster. As a result, I was afraid all the time.”

After attending Portadown College Herbie ventured into journalism, working for the Portadown Times, Lurgan Mail and Ulster Star. He recalls a short spell with the Belfast Telegraph but was ‘afraid of the news editor’.

He devoted much of his life to the study of magic and the paranormal and was determined from a young age to become an accomplished magician.

This led him to conduct a series of fascinating experiments over the years — including hypnosis (first carried out on a classmate when he was nine), astral projection, spiritualism, past-life regression, testing the power of the I Ching, and numerology. Much of this has been detailed in a memoir he published in recent years ‘Enchanted Life: The Memoir of a Magician’. In it he writes affectionately about the host of captivating characters who have played a large part in his story: both those immersed in spiritual thinking and connected to higher planes and the larger-than-life, often roguish, characters he met as a journalist.

Herbie moved to Dublin in the 1960s to edit weekly news magazine Scene. He also lectured and wrote profusely. He initially trained in esoteric teachings and Qabalah with the Fraternity of the Inner Light. In 1998 he published Martian Genesis an ancient astronaut book which claimed the human race is of extra-terrestrial origin.

Despite avoiding publicity, he became somewhat of an unlikely celebrity in Italy as he recalled in a recent interview with the News Letter: "I only managed to become known in Italy when the Press there decided I had prophesied the election of Pope Benedict XVI. I hadn’t, but a lot of Italians still believe it.”

Herbie, who had Parkinson’s, lived in Carlow in a ‘delightful old rectory’. He told the News Letter: “I’m fortunate enough to be married to the Master Medical Herbalist, psychotherapist, author, graphic artist, world class chef and garden designer, Jacquie Burgess. I have two children, both girls, from a previous marriage. The elder, Aynia, lives in Denmark and is a fantastically good nature photographer. The younger, Sian, is an actor and script-writer who lives in the Irish republic and also creates special effects for movies.”

His latest book was written and published before his 83rd birthday last year and he described it as a ‘memoir teetering on being an autobiography’. He said he found it more difficult to write because of his illness. He told the News Letter: “I’d written every day of my life for half a century and I wanted to smell the coffee. I should have left it alone at that point, but I got fancy inside my head and started to think in terms of life patterns and destinies. “Surely with so many books written, I was something of a literary phenomenon and needed to complete the circle of my life with one more book. It would have to stand as a monument to my life’s work, an explanation of my philosophy, a presentation of my deepest, most important thoughts.

"As a symbol of my gratitude for what the country had given me (I lived tax free for many years, among other things) I would find an Irish publisher – I’d only ever been published in Ireland once before: a teenage horror novel so bloodthirsty that one English editor not only turned it up up up up up, but also said she hoped no other editor would buy it.

"It was all pretentious nonsense, of course, brought on by old age and depression. I never thought of my work like that. If anything, I wrote to please myself, often to learn more about something that interested me. I have no ‘author’s message,’ and I doubt I ever will have. At best, I’m just something of an entertainer.”

Former Portadown Times editor David Armstrong said: “Herbie Brennan was a former Portadown Times journalist and I actually worked with him. He was from Gilford and his mother owned a shop there on the main street. Former Portadown College students there will recall with some hilarity his reports on the annual cross-country race. He was quite a character and was one of the first to own a Triumph Herald car in the town.”

James Herbert (Herbie) Brennan, Author. Slaney House (The Old Rectory), Tullow, Co. Carlow died on 1st January 2024. He will be sadly missed by his loving wife Jacquie, daughters Aynia and Sian and his many friends. A private funeral took place at Woodbrook Woodland Burial Ground.