Ronan Bennett is a Northern Irish novelist and screenwriter. He was raised in a devout Roman Catholic family headed by William H. and Geraldine Bennett at 420 Merville Garden Village in the Whitehouse area of Newtownabbey, Northern Ireland. Since its development in the late-1940s, Merville has always been proud of its mixed Roman Catholic/Protestant make up. Bennett attended the Christian Brothers Grammar School in West Belfast . In 1974 while at school Bennett was convicted of murdering Inspector William Elliott, a 49 year-old police officer in the Royal Ulster Constabulary during an... Official IRA bank robbery at the Ulster Bank in The Diamond shopping area at Rathcoole, close to his Merville Garden Village home, on 6 September 1974. His conviction was overturned on appeal in 1975 and Bennett was released from Long Kesh prison near Lisburn, Co. Antrim. Later Bennett apparently displayed a sympathy towards the Irish National Liberation Army , which made its name after it killed Margaret Thatcher's Northern Ireland advisor Airey Neave in 1979. Bennett then moved to London.
more