A lament for my uncle, the voice of those ground down by church and state

Today a good part of the Irish nation is in mourning for a man they loved ? part of the cultural hinterland of millions

Just west of Tarbert I caught the smell of turf smoke and I felt the tears welling up. Turf smoke, the smell of the past. I was in a daze, jet-lagged and sad, watching the bogland rolling west towards the Atlantic, small farms and little villages, the watery sunlight on a field where boys were playing Gaelic football. Duagh, Lyrecrompane, Ballylongford, Listowel. I was coming home. This is my father's country and I was travelling back to the funeral of his brother. We reached Listowel as dusk was coming on and, in the words of one of my uncles poem's, "shadows were falling all over Feale River". The journey had begun 24 hours before in the early hours of the morning in Pakistan.

My cousin called to say my uncle was days away from death. This man was more than an uncle to me; father figure, mentor, adviser, the kindest man I ever knew. I feel an intense grief, for this man loved me with his whole, wonderful heart. I jumped on the quickest flights I could find but John B Keane died before I could get to his bedside. His wife and children were there in his room above the family pub in William Street, Listowel. By the time I arrived people were already arriving to offer their condolences. The town is suddenly aware of a great absence. In rural Ireland they still live by what Seamus Heaney calls "customary rhythms", and so friends and distant relatives file into the room to say goodbye to the dead and to console his family. Our grieving is open and welcoming. Endless pots of tea are made, there are sandwiches and cake.

Today a good part of the Irish nation is in mourning for a man they loved. I shy away from calling him a "national institution", for this fiercely independent man had no time for institutions of any kind. But he did represent something great to the nation. He was part of the cultural hinterland of millions of people. My uncle was one of the Irish generation forced to emigrate to England because of unemployment, but unlike so many he came home, determined to make a life in his father's place. His first plays were rejected by the Abbey Theatre. But he kept writing and within a decade of his return had become the most famous playwright in the country. He wrote of a rural Ireland that was vanishing in the face of new money and television. Never sentimental but with a clear eye and open heart, John B gave voice to the small farmers, the women trapped on remote farms, ground down by church and state; he stood always with the small figures in a landscape where the church and nationalist politicians imposed a stultifying orthodoxy. In one of his poems he underscored powerfully the position of the rural poor:

We called every man Sir who wore collar and tie

we died when our betters died

old woman you and I.

He was a devout Catholic, yet he never shied away from exposing the hypocrisy and cruelty of the repressive attitudes of his church; he believed in a united Ireland but loathed the arid nationalism that dominated the public debate. John B denounced the IRA campaign in the North and he campaigned against the compulsory teaching of the Irish language in schools (believing correctly that it would alienate children from the language). For this last he was lucky to escape with his life when a bunch of language fascists broke up a meeting in Dublin's Mansion House.

When I was starting out in journalism, he offered me a piece of advice I have never forgotten: "Look out for the small man. The big fellows can look after themselves. The small man will tell you the truth.'' Politicians of all hue courted him and there were efforts to make him stand for the Irish presidency. He would have romped home. However his response to the pressure was typical. He told a radio interviewer: "I looked at myself shaving in the mirror this morning and I did not see the President of Ireland staring back.''

John B's attitude to political life could best be summed up by reflecting on the case of one Thomas Doodle esq. During one of the bitter election campaigns of the 1950s, John B and some friends decided to put up a joke candidate. The idea was to inject humour into a bitter campaign being fought yet again on the bitter split of the Irish Civil War. The candidate was a local character whom they named "Tom Doodle". Campaigning under the slogan "Vote the Noodle and give the Whole Caboodle to Doodle", they brought a crowd of three thousand people into Listowel to welcome the candidate. There was a brass band and men fired shots in the air as the procession made its way to the town square. Doodle was John B's answer to the politics of the past that were strangling his country.

I am proud of the tributes paid to him: a playwright, novelist and poet who had earnt his place as one of the leading figures of 20th century Irish literature. The papers speak of a great creative force vanishing. The President and the Taoiseach led the national tributes. John B was never modest for the sake of appearances and he would love the fuss. His writing brought him fame and money but he never left the small town in which he grew up. He lived to see his work performed as far afield as Broadway and Moscow but his only foreign holiday was a week in New York about 15 years ago; he was a mainstay of the renowned Abbey Theatre and even saw his play The Field turned into a Hollywood movie, but he would endlessly make himself available to talk to young writers who dropped in to the family pub.

He wrote in a tiny room above the bar, which looked out on to William Street and the Market Square. From here he surveyed the universal parish and faithfully gave voice to an Ireland long ignored by the urban literati. Some of the latter were inclined, in the early days, to dismiss him as country hick. A couple of decades later they were calling him an Irish Chekhov. As he said himself: "You couldn't keep up with the hoors!'' The pub was run by his wife, Mary. She was his inspiration and his compass, she protected him from bores and he knew that his writing success was hugely dependent on her love and support. My dear aunt is heartbroken today. We all are.

My treasured memories are not of the public man, but of a figure who gave me the gift of unconditional love. When my father became ill with alcoholism, John B was a father figure who helped to keep me sane; he got me my first job in journalism and was always ready with help or advice. He would follow my career, and when I called, he always asked: "Are you writing?'' A writer should write every day, he believed. Now our family is gathering from all over Ireland and the world. There is a coming together in the house on William Street. The days pass in a blur of sympathy and ritual. My cousins Conor, Billy, John and Joanna are brave beyond words. After the public clamour has died away, they and their mother must live on without this extraordinary life force. In Irish we have a saying: 'Ni bheidh a leitheid aris ann.' It means: "His likes will not be here again."

The writer is a BBC Special Correspondent