Germany Calling : A Personal Biography of William Joyce, Lord Haw Haw

William Brooke Joyce (24 April 1906 – 3 January 1946),nicknamed Lord Haw-Haw, was an American-born, Anglo-Irish Fascist politician and Nazi propaganda broadcaster to the United Kingdom during World War II. He was convicted of one count of high treason in 1945 and was sentenced to death. The Court of Appeal and the House of Lords upheld his conviction. He was hanged at Wandsworth Prison by Albert Pierrepoint on 3 January 1946, making him the second to last person to be executed for treason in the United Kingdom (before Theodore Schurch the following day). William Brooke Joyce was born on Herkimer Street in Brooklyn, New York, United States. His father was Michael Francis Joyce (9 December 1866 – 19 February 1941) an Irish Catholic from a family of farmers in Ballinrobe, County Mayo, who had taken United States citizenship on 25 October 1894. His mother was Gertrude Emily Brooke, who although born in Shaw and Crompton, Lancashire, England, was from a well-off Anglican Anglo-Irish family of medical practitioners associated with County Roscommon. A few years after William's birth, the family returned to Salthill, Galway, permanently. Joyce attended St Ignatius College, a Jesuit school in Galway (from 1915–21). Joyce's mother was strongly Anglocentric and despite tensions with her father for marrying a Catholic, remained staunchly Protestant and Unionist herself, hostile to Irish nationalism. Joyce's father bought up houses and rented some to the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC).