Walled in by Hate - Kevin O’Higgins, His Friends and Enemies
By Arthur Mathews
*****
This is an absorbing and revealing take on O’Higgins and the Civil War period. It’s very readable for a history book and offers much attendant colour and detail to this tragic episode. It’s clear Mathews’ sympathies (and mine) lie with the Free State. The anti-Treaty forces strategy was to undermine the new state by hitting at its infrastructure and thereby forcing the Brits back to the table so they could renegotiate the Six Counties deal. This was never going to work, which soon became clear, so that in the end it was pure destructive nihilism driven by diehards (to use O’Casey’s term) such as Liam Lynch. De Valera is nowhere to be seen and his sole purpose seems to have been to give the anti-Treaty side the imprimatur of his support. The draconian response of the new government and O’Higgins was justified by the support of the vast majority of the population who wanted to see the new state survive. It’s a great irony of history that those who strove to strangle the Republic at birth went on to govern it for the bulk of the last 100 years – and, sadly, continue to do so. A feature of the book is the number of anecdotes that emphasise the absolute religious faith of the protagonists on both sides. Young men in prison facing execution the next day all seemed at peace with their impending extinction following the ministrations of their priests. They all assumed they were going to heaven I suppose, following confession. A bit like those Islamic martyrs these days. O’Higgins relationship with Hazel Lavery (platonic or not) was a bizarre episode – his dedication to faith and family seemed at odds with this strange dalliance. You don’t expect one of the writers of Father Ted to turn up on the history shelves, but Mathews has produced an entertaining and very informative book, throwing new light (for me anyway) on O’Higgins and the Civil War. And casting a cold eye on that brute Liam Lynch.
John Montague
A Poet’s Life
By Adrian Frazier
*****
Adrian Frazier was a friend of John Montague and it’s a testament to his objectivity that after reading this biography your admiration for Montague the poet has increased, but your liking for the man has been diminished. His childhood traumas are well explored and underpin much of his poetry. The other major influence was his obsession with women and his absorption of Robert Graves’ fairly daft notion of the female as muse in The White Goddess. A stance that alienated him from many in the burgeoning Feminist movement. His stammer was a life-long affliction, and he went through life feeling that he never really received the respect and kudos he merited. He was particularly piqued by the attention enjoyed by his fellow Ulsterman Seamus Heaney. The climax of this sense of being thwarted of his dues came when on the day his Collected Poems was published, it was announced that Heaney had won the Nobel prize. The windows of Hodges Figgis and Waterstones were full of his books on publication day, and the next day they were gone, replaced by Heaney’s entire oeuvre. His marital misadventures are well documented, especially his fraught relationship with his second wife Evelyn, a fiery French woman – violence on both sides apparently. For anyone interested in the Irish literary scene this is a page turner with a rich cast of characters and it does full justice to Montague’s rich poetic legacy. Rows with an easily-affronted Derek Mahon and a cantankerous Aidan Higgins feature but there are also encounters with a host of the familiar names: Samuel Beckett, Barrie Cooke, John Berryman, and Allen Ginsberg amongst them. Frazier’s entertaining book will surely prove to be the definitive biography.
