Joseph O’Neill, from British School to Acclaimed Novelist and Lawyer
Algemeen IngezondenJoseph O’Neill is a remarkably multi-talented individual; as a contemporary novelist, non-fiction author and former lawyer, he is best known for his award-winning novel Netherland. However, he spent a significant amount of his early life as a student at the British School in Voorschoten, the Netherlands.
By Amy Staton
Early Life & BSN
Joseph O’Neill, half-Irish, half-Turkish, was born in Cork, Ireland, in 1964. He grew up internationally, living in countries such as Mozambique, Turkey and Iran as a young child. At six years old, he relocated to the Netherlands, where he attended the BSN in Voorschoten from 1970 to 1981.
During his time at the BSN, O’Neill was taught German by Mr Mike Weston, the current school archivist. Mr Weston describes O’Neill as a “remarkable student” with a “delightful character,” emphasising that he was “not the sort of student one easily forgets.” The school must have had a similar impact on O’Neill himself as, while in Amsterdam to give a talk on his works in June 2025, he reached out to BSN alumni to let them know he was returning to the country. Mr Weston contacted O’Neill, and the two reconnected after almost 45 years in a special moment which highlights the lasting impact of a well-respected teacher.
Achievements
After graduating from the BSN, O’Neill was accepted into Cambridge University, not to study English, as one might expect of a successful author, but to read Law. He explained this decision in a 2009 interview, describing how ‘literature was too precious’ to be weighed down by too much academic analysis. O’Neill was called to the English Bar in 1987 and continued to work as a full-time barrister in London until 2001. During these years, O’Neill spent time writing his first few novels and, like many emerging authors, experienced difficulties in reaching his target audience.
However, his breakthrough came with the publication of his novel Netherland in May of 2008. The novel, set in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks, tells the story of a Dutch financial analyst living in New York who takes up cricket at the Staten Island Cricket Club. O’Neill likely drew inspiration from his own enjoyment of the sport, as he first began playing club cricket while growing up in the Netherlands, as well as from his experiences living internationally.
Netherland was featured on the cover of the New York Times Book Review, where senior editor Dwight Garner called it “the wittiest, angriest, most exacting and most desolate work of fiction we’ve yet had about life in New York and London after the World Trade Centre fell.” The novel went on to win the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, as well as the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award. Even US President Barack Obama described it as “an excellent novel” in a BBC interview in June 2009.
Currently
O’Neill is now an established and highly praised author, having written 5 novels, a collection of short stories, a non-fiction book, and various political essays and critical writings.
O’Neill currently resides in New York with his family and is a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Written Arts at Bard College.
In a 2014 interview in the Observer, O’Neill described his enjoyment of the teaching environment: “Teaching is nothing like being in court. Being in court is terrifying. You will always be asked a question you don’t want to answer,”
Mr O’Neill said. “Students are not trying to catch you out. They just want to know stuff.”
