Write of Passage Arthur Mathews
Arthur Mathews was born in Co Meath in 1959. With Graham Linehan, he co-created and wrote Father Ted and Big Train. He has also written for e Fast Show, Harry En eld, Brass Eye and many others. He co-wrote the stage musical I, Keano and the feature lm Wide Open Spaces. With Matt Berry he created the TV shows Toast of London and Toast of Tinseltown. He also wrote the book, WellRemembered Days, an imagined autobiography of ‘Eoin O’ceallaigh, ‘a writer, poet, nationalist, playwright, civil servant, commentator and champion of the traditional values of Ireland’.
You rst read Terence de Vere White’s book about Kevin O’higgins more than 30 years ago. So, what was the spark in recent times that nally impelled you to write your own biography, Walled in by Hate?
I was aware that his centenary is coming up in 2027. I considered it was likely that someone would probably write something about him, so I thought that ‘someone’ might as well be me. Apart from de Vere White’s book, John P Mccarthy wrote Kevin O’higgins: Builder of e Irish State some years ago. It’s a very good book but is mostly focused on his political career.
You write that even the bare bones of O’higgins’s story (the man who signed the execution warrant of the best man at his wedding, the government minister assassinated at the age of 35) are such that they could have sprung from the imagination of a novelist or screenwriter. Was a screenplay ever a consideration for you? If so, what would your opening scene be?
I’d love to write a screenplay about it. It’s such an astonishingly dramatic tale with an extraordinary cast of characters. It’s hard to believe all these things happened. I think the opening scene would have to be the assassination, and then the rest of the story would be about the events leading up to that day.
Is there a book from childhood or your teen years that le a lasting impression?
I can’t remember anything that made a big impact on me from that period; I’d have to go forward a few years to my early 20s when I was given Bruce Mccall’s book, Zany A ernoons featuring his contributions to e New Yorker, Vanity Fair, etc. He was a wonderful illustrator with a brilliant comic imagination – and a big in uence on me. (I’ve just googled ‘Bruce
Mccall’ and came across a glowing David Letterman tribute to him).
Inevitably, the subject of your friend Graham Linehan has surfaced in media interviews for this book.
Has writing about Kevin O’higgins – his motivations, his friends and his enemies as the book’s subtitle has it – prompted echoes in any way of your relationship with Graham and his cancellation in recent times?
A lot of hate surrounds Graham. He su ers a lot of online abuse from people, and he dishes it out as well. It’s the reason I don’t have much of a presence on social media. Cancel culture is very real and I regard it with horror. Graham is very talented and should be allowed do his job. I wrote a short paragraph about his situation in the book, because I thought it had relevance to the position O’higgins found himself in, but the editor suggested I cut it.
As someone with a long fascination with history, is there any other Irish historical gure that you have considered as a subject for a book?