Barbaric Genius

Barbaric Genius. A man of literature, chess and violence

The unpredictable life of John Healy – award-winning author, internationally distinguished chess player and erstwhile alcoholic vagrant – is the subject of this stimulating new documentary by Paul Duane. 

Charting Healy’s violent upbringing in London’s Kentish Town slums as a child to Irish emigrant parents, and returning to the haunts where the writer slept, drank and fought in the ’60s and ’70s, the film provides an overview of the crucial lowlights of The Grass Arena, Healy’s breakthrough autobiography published by Faber in 1988 and universally acknowledged as a masterpiece.