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{{Short description|Irish essayist (1900–1991)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=February 2023}}
{{more citations needed|date=August 2015}}
{{Infobox writer
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| birth_place = Kilkenny, Ireland
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'''Hubert Marshal Butler''' (23 October 1900 – 5 January 1991) was an Irish essayist who wrote on a wide range of topics, from local history and archaeology to the political and religious affairs of eastern Europe before and during [[World War II]]. He also travelled to [[Anschluss|Nazi Austria]] on his own initiative and at his own expense and helped save [[Jews]] from being sent to concentration camps.<ref name="holocaust">{{cite news|url=https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/culture-shock-in-saving-jews-from-the-nazis-hubert-butler-saved-ireland-from-shame-1.2076949/|title= Culture Shock: In saving Jews from the Nazis, Hubert Butler saved Ireland from shame | author= Fintan O'Toole |accessdate=26 January 2015|newspaper= The Irish Times|date=24 January 2015}}</ref>
==Early life==
Butler was born on 23 October 1900 to George Butler and Harriet Clarke,<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/details-civil/286dff2531723|title=General Registrar's Office|website=IrishGenealogy.ie|access-date=9 August 2017}}</ref> at the family home of [http://www.wikimapia.org/#lat=52.5776018&lon=-7.1859169&z=13&l=0&m=b&v=8 Maiden Hall] outside the village of [[Bennettsbridge]] in [[County Kilkenny]]. Butler graduated in 1922 from [[St John's College, Oxford]], where he studied classics. After being recruited by [[Horace Plunkett|Sir Horace Plunkett]] to work for the Irish County Libraries from graduation until 1926, Butler later travelled extensively in [[Croatia]], [[Serbia]], [[Bosnia and Herzegovina|Bosnia]], [[Macedonia (region)|Macedonia]] and [[Montenegro]] before working with the [[Quaker]]s in Vienna expediting the escape of Jews after the [[Anschluss]].
Butler's father, George Butler, was teaching practical agriculture to [[Gerald Gallagher]] on the farm at Maiden Hall when Gallagher applied for a position in the British colonial service, where he became the first officer-in-charge of the [[Phoenix Islands Settlement Scheme]], the last colonial expansion of the British Empire.
Upon the death of George Butler in 1941, Hubert Butler inherited Maiden Hall and returned to live with his family in the house on the banks of the [[River Nore]] until his death in 1991. His wife, Susan Margaret – usually referred to as Peggy – was sister of the theatre director [[Tyrone Guthrie]] and the moving force behind foundation of the [[Kilkenny Art Gallery Society]]. Tyrone Guthrie was instrumental in establishing internationally renowned [https://www.stratfordfestival.ca/AboutUs/OurHistory/Timeline Stratford Theatre]<ref>[https://www.stratfordfestival.ca/AboutUs/OurHistory/Timeline Stratford] Theatre</ref> in Stratford, Ontario, Canada. Today, the Butler homestead remains in the family, with part of it operating as an ongoing business under the tutelage of his granddaughter, Suzanna Crampton, as [http://zwartblesireland.com/ Zwartbles Ireland]. Suzanna continues the tradition of her grandfather Hubert, and her godmother Pamela Travers, by practicing ecological farming and writing books and giving public talks. She maintains an active Twitter account, [https://twitter.com/ZwartblesIE ZwartblesIE], documenting the farm and her activities.
==Historian and writer==
Butler sought to encourage understanding of Irish social and political history through study of the land, the people and the primary source materials. He was a co-reviver of the [[Kilkenny Archaeological Society]] and through it promoted Catholic-Protestant reconciliation. Always stylish and subtle, his writing used local events as parables for the politics and pressures that accompanied the emergence of the Irish state. His book ''Ten Thousand Saints'' was a virtuoso performance, concluding with a theory that the apparently absurd legends of Irish prehistory and theology could provide evidence of the migration of Iron-age tribes around Europe. He illustrated the point by reference to local history and scholarship. Having argued that the saints of Ireland were disguised personifications of the tribes and political factions of Iron-age Ireland, he went on to suggest that the Old Testament could be the same for Jewish prehistory.
==Saving Jews from the Holocaust==
In 1938 Butler was disgusted at the [[antisemitic]] comments in Ireland particularly those of [[Oliver J. Flanagan]] who in a statement to the [[Dáil]] said "They (the Jews) crucified our Saviour 1,900 years ago and they have been crucifying us every day of the week". In response to comments like this Butler wrote that "I was as Irish as Oliver Flanagan and I was determined that Jewish refugees should come to Ireland" He then traveled to Austria and the first people he saved were Erwin Strunz, his wife and two children, who he helped travel from Austria to Ireland. He continued saving lives and working with both the Irish [[Quakers]] and American Quakers secured exit visas for dozen of Jews to escape from Vienna to Ireland and helped them to settle in the Americas.<ref name="holocaust" />
==Post
After giving a broadcast talk in 1947 about Yugoslavia he was publicly criticised for failing to mention the alleged suffering of Catholics under [[Josip Broz Tito]]'s regime. He responded by trying to draw attention to another matter he had avoided in his radio talk, and which he saw as a greater scandal: the [[Involvement of Croatian Catholic clergy with the Ustaša regime|involvement of Catholic clergy with the Ustaša]], a Nazi-installed puppet regime that had waged a genocidal crusade against non-Catholics in part of Yugoslavia during World War II. Butler's efforts in this respect earned him notoriety and public opprobrium in clerical Ireland to the extent that he felt obliged to leave the archaeological society he had played a big part in reviving.<ref>''The sub-prefect should have held his tongue'', Hubert Butler, Allen Lane The Penguin Press, London 1990 (pp 271-2, 279-280). {{ISBN|9780713990423}}</ref>
[[File:Church next to Kings River near Stoneyford, Co. Kilkenny - geograph.org.uk - 206353.jpg|thumb|St. Peter's Church in Ennisnag]]
Butler was a keen market gardener as well as a writer and his circle of friends included the [[Mary Poppins (book series)|Mary Poppins]] creator [[Pamela Travers]], the journalist [[Claud Cockburn]], and the poet [[Padraic Colum]]. He believed strongly in the importance of the family and, as well as playing an active role in keeping his own extended family in touch, he was the founder of the [[Butler Society]].
He is buried five miles from the family home at [[St. Peter's Church, Ennisnag, Kilkenny]]. The Kilkenny Art Gallery Society's [[Butler Gallery]] was named in honour of Hubert and Peggy.
==Books==
* ''Ten Thousand Saints: A Study in Irish and European Origins'', Wellbrook Press (1972)
* ''Ten Thousand Saints: A Study in Irish and European Origins'', a new edition, amplified and updated, Lilliput Press (2011)
* ''The Sub-Prefect Should Have Held His Tongue, and Other Essays'', ed. [[R. F. Foster (historian)|R.F. Foster]], Allen Lane The Penguin Press (London 1990)
==Translations==
* [[Anton Chekhov]], ''[[The Cherry Orchard]]''. Intro. Tyrone Guthrie. London: H.F.W. Dane & Sons Ltd; Boston.: Baker's Plays (1934)
* [[Leonid Leonov]], ''The Thief''. London: Martin Warburg (1931) New York: Vintage (1960)
==Collected essays==
Published by the Lilliput Press of Dublin
* ''Escape from the Anthill'' (1985)
* ''Escape from the Anthill'', revised with corrections (1986)
* ''The Children of Drancy'' (1988)
* ''Grandmother and Wolf Tone'' (1990)
* ''In the Land of Nod'' (1996).
* ''The Appleman and the Poet'' (2014).
Published in US by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
* ''Independent Spirit'' (1997)
Published in France by Editions Anatolia
* ''L'Envahisseur est venu en Pantoufles'' (1995) with introduction by [[Joseph Brodsky]]
==Published works about Hubert Butler==
* Doctoral thesis by Robert B. Tobin, Oxford D.Phil., 2004: ''The minority voice: Hubert Butler, southern Protestantism and intellectual dissent, 1930-72''.
*{{cite book| title=Unfinished Ireland: Essays on Hubert Butler| editor=Chris Agee| editor-link=Chris Agee| publisher=Irish Pages, in association with the Butler Society | year= 2003| isbn=978-0-9544257-0-8}}
==References==
{{Reflist}}
==External links==
* {{cite web |url=https://www.dib.ie/biography/butler-hubert-marshall-a1247 |title=Butler, Hubert Marshall |author= Bateman, Kate | website = [[Dictionary of Irish Biography]] |accessdate= 14 June 2021}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Butler, Hubert}}
[[Category:1900 births]]
[[Category:1991 deaths]]
[[Category:20th-century Irish writers]]
[[Category:20th-century Irish male writers]]
[[Category:20th-century Irish translators]]
[[Category:20th-century essayists]]
[[Category:Alumni of St John's College, Oxford]]
[[Category:20th-century Anglo-Irish people]]
[[Category:Christopher Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize recipients]]
[[Category:Irish Anglicans]]
[[Category:Irish essayists]]
[[Category:20th-century Irish historians]]
[[Category:Irish translators]]
[[Category:People from Bennettsbridge]]
[[Category:Russian–English translators]]
[[Category:Members of Kilkenny Archaeological Society]]
[[Category:Writers from County Kilkenny]]
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