Celebrated children’s author and scriptwriter Gordon Snell has died peacefully in his home, at the age of 93.
Husband of the late Irish author Maeve Binchy, Gordon was born in Singapore in 1932 and spent several years in boarding school in Australia. The family returned to the UK where he completed his schooling before going on to study English language and literature at Oxford.
He became a radio studio manager with the BBC overseas service and then moved into writing and presenting. He wrote scripts for numerous shows and worked on Woman’s Hour, where he interviewed many of the pop stars of the day.
He met his wife at the BBC and they navigated a long distance romance between London and Dublin for a number of years. They married in 1977 and eventually moved to Dublin, settling in the seaside village of Dalkey, where they would both spend the rest of their years. They worked side by side harmoniously until Binchy's death in 2012.
Snell published his first book for children in 1978, The King of Quizzical Island. This was followed by Amy’s Wonderful Nest, Tina and the Tooth Fairy and The Supermarket Ghost, among others.
When Snell moved to Ireland, he wrote several scripts for RTÉ, including Wanderly Wagon. He wrote over 70 books for children over the course of his long career, as well as comedy for adults.
Assistant general secretary of the National Union of Journalists Seamus Dooley said Snell ‘could appear the quintessential Englishman’ but had ‘a very Irish sense of humour. He was proud to be known as Maeve’s husband but Gordon also made an enormous contribution to the arts and literature, especially children’s literature and like Maeve was a tremendous supporter of emerging talent.’
The Echoes Maeve Binchy Literary Festival, which takes place in Dalkey every October, said the couple ‘spent their very happily married lives together writing heartfelt dedications to each other in their books and entertaining each other with stories. Our consolation is that they are reunited together now in love and laughter.’
