Pete Hamill: A peasant in the halls of the great

Born in Brooklyn to Catholic parents who emigrated from Belfast to depression era US, Pete Hamill became a towering figure in New York City journalism who championed the plight of the working classes, writes Terry Golway

Pete Hamill, at home in 2001.

He was born in Brooklyn to parents who fled Belfast 90 years ago. He was a brilliant but bored student who dropped out of a prestigious Jesuit high school in Manhattan to join the Navy. He taught himself to draw and how to read a poem. He turned his eye to the streets of mid-20th century New York, and they became his first love. One day in 1960, with the help of a friend, he landed a job at the New York Post, a tabloid known for its liberal politics and literate columnists.

And then he became Pete Hamill, journalist, novelist, and editor, equally at home in the company of Seamus Heaney as he was with the nurse who lived across the street or the cop he passed on his way to the subway.