Remembering Jennifer Johnston: A Voice That Bridged Generations

Author, Jennifer Johnston. 07.03.05 Pic. Maura Hickey/086 8541130.

“We read real books, right from the age of four up to 17. We also read history books. But it always seemed to me that history books were written by people who were trying to explain some enormous mess that we’d all got into but were never going to be able to explain. Whereas novelists can explain things in their own way. That’s why it’s so important that children read.” – Jennifer Johnston

“Born in Dublin in 1930, living for 40 years in Derry, and passing away in Dun Laoghaire in 2025, Jennifer Johnston’s 95 year life was one that witnessed historic changes on this island. The beginning of and eventual end of the Troubles in Northern Ireland occurred during that lifetime. A conflict that was all the more close in her adopted home of Derry. 

Born to a protestant family and living during the time of the troubles, Johnston was intimately familiar with the complexity of identity. The historical context of Irish identity shaped her work. Most famously How Many Miles to Babylon(1974) tells the story of Alec, the son of Anglo-Irish parents, and Jerry, a boy from county Wicklow. Divided by class and background, Alec and Jerry become friends regardless, but are ultimately drawn into the maelstrom of world war 1. Anglo-Irish identity is also explored in other Johnston works such as Old Jest (1979), which was adapted into the Anthony Hopkins film The Dawning (1988), and How Many Miles to Babylon remains widely read as it is a set text for English Literature students. 

Johnston’s work arises not only in response to identity and conflict, but also to a different structural roadblock. Her son Patrick, a former Europe editor at The Irish Times, explained that “she could see of escaping the trap of domesticity and its isolation”. Johnston’s road to writing was long, despite coming from a family of creatives. Her mother Shelah Richards was an actor and director, and her father Denis Johnston was a playwright. Jennifer published her first book The Captains and the Kings in 1972 at the age of 42. Johnston had first studied English Literature and French at Trinity College Dublin in 1951, but had left without completing her degree. She married fellow student Ian Smyth and they had four children, Sarah, Lucy, Malachy, and Patrick, but later divorced after which she married solicitor David Gilliland. It is clear however that she was not finished with learning, and in light of her son’s comments, she was not content with domesticity. In the end it was 1965 when she graduated Trinity with a degree in Ancient and Modern Languages. Despite these setbacks she went on to have an incredibly prolific output from her 40s on, publishing over 20 novels, penning 12 plays, and winning numerous awards including a lifetime achievement award from the Irish Book Awards. Her novel Shadows on our Skin was shortlisted for the 1977 Booker Prize.

Jennifer Johnston left university in 1951 when she got married, as many women did, but found her way to a pursuit that gave her real fulfillment. “She passed on to her children a love of life, of curiosity, of fun, and a need to challenge. And love of books” her son Patrick said. 

Johnson was shaped by her home, especially Derry, where the BBC noted she embraced the city’s cultural life, and became known to half the taxi driver’s in the city, as well as Brian and Anne Friel. 

Shaped by the complexities of Anglo-Irish Identity which colours her work, it has allowed her to shape our cultural remembrance of history in the unique way that fiction does.”

Sam Hayes, Museum of Childhood Ireland, February 2025

“I didn’t encounter Jennifer Johnston’s writing until the 80s, standing in Eason’s bookshop in Dublin on a rainy September afternoon. How Many Miles to Babylon? was assigned reading for a class I was due to give. I read it there and then and couldn’t wait to share it with my students.

Johnston’s work resonates deeply with all who study the complex terrain of childhood and its echoes throughout life. Her narratives often explored how the experiences of our earliest years shape our understanding of the world and our place within it. In “How Many Miles to Babylon?”, the friendship between Alexander and Jerry—crossing boundaries of class and privilege—reminds us that children naturally reach across the artificial divides created by adults, finding common ground in shared humanity.

Her Anglo-Irish characters often exist between worlds, neither fully belonging to Ireland nor England and another brilliant metaphor for the divided self of the trauma survivor. I’ve always thought her sparse style reflected something essential about childhood memory: how certain moments crystallise with terrible clarity while others dissolve completely.

What makes Johnston’s exploration of childhood so poignant is her refusal to sentimentalise it. She recognized childhood as a time of both wonder and vulnerability, where the seeds of future conflicts are often planted. Her character Laura from The Invisible Worm (1991) haunts me still, “I am not sure in which tense I live, the present or the past,” she says – a perfect articulation of trauma. Johnston knew how childhood wounds don’t heal in neat chronological order.

Johnston’s absolute refusal to look the other way is striking. In Grace and Truth (2005), she tackled subjects that make people uneasy: incest, rape, the violations that happen behind respectable doors. Not for shock value—never that—but because truth matters. Because children matter. Because what happens to us in childhood shapes everything.

I remember hearing from a friend that they threw The Invisible Worm across the room when they’d finished it. Not in anger, but in that peculiar mix of devastation and recognition that comes when a writer has named something you thought was unnameable. Johnston understood childhood sexual abuse not as a “topic” but as a lived reality that distorts time itself. Survivors know this distortion intimately.

What would Johnston make of our current conversations about childhood? About trauma and memory? She was ahead of her time, writing about these subjects when Irish society still preferred silence. Her work reminds us that preserving childhood experiences—even painful ones—matters. That children’s perspectives offer crucial insights into the adult world we’ve created.

Johnston taught us that childhood isn’t something we graduate from but something we carry, for better and for worse.

The literary establishment never quite gave Johnston her full due, I think. Was it because she wrote about uncomfortable subjects? Maybe because she centered women’s and children’s experiences, or perhaps because her prose lacked the pyrotechnics that critics often mistake for depth? Whatever the reason, those of us who found her books know their value.

On finishing Grace and Truth, for a long time everything else I read felt shallow by comparison. Johnston had ventured into the darkest territories of the human experience and returned with something that wasn’t quite hope but wasn’t quite despair either—something more honest than that. Through the character of Sally, Johnston examines how the discovery of family truths can lead to a profound reassessment of identity and place in the world. The novel speaks to the importance of honesty in intergenerational relationships and the healing power of uncovering suppressed narratives.

Johnston understood that children are not merely passive observers but active participants in history, whose perspectives offer unique insights into our shared past. For those who work to preserve and honor childhood experiences in all their diversity and complexity, Johnston’s books offer both validation and challenge.

While we say our sad farewell to Jennifer Johnston, her work remains – a testament to the power of literature in facing difficult truths about childhood trauma, about family secrets, about the past’s grip on the present. In an age where the voices and experiences of children are increasingly recognised as vital to our understanding of society, Johnston’s work remains remarkably relevant. Her literary legacy reminds us that to understand the adult world, we must first acknowledge the child’s perspective—how they perceive, process, and ultimately carry forward the complexities of human experience. Jennifer Johnston’s voice will continue to speak across generations.

While the distance between childhood and adulthood may be many miles, it is the journey between them that defines who we become.”

Majella McAllister, Museum of Childhood Ireland, February 2025

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