Sean McMahon: Young, funny and inquiring until the very end

Friends pay tribute to schoolteacher-turned-author who passed away this week aged 88
Sean McMahon.Sean McMahon.
Sean McMahon.

Sean McMahon died this week at the age of 88, but he was never old.

While his body may have started playing tricks on him over the last few years, his massive scholastic mind was young, funny and inquiring until the very end.

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The St Columb’s College teacher-turned-author was still writing plays, reviews and lectures up until a few weeks ago. And, as recently as last weekend, he was joking with doctors, and taking great delight in correcting his visitors’ wayward grammar, from his hospital bed. When one consultant told him he was so sorry about his prognosis, McMahon advised him: ‘Don’t worry - your day will come…’

1955... Sean McMahon (second from right) in rehearsals for a production of ‘Oklahoma’ at St Columb’s Hall.1955... Sean McMahon (second from right) in rehearsals for a production of ‘Oklahoma’ at St Columb’s Hall.
1955... Sean McMahon (second from right) in rehearsals for a production of ‘Oklahoma’ at St Columb’s Hall.

Born in Creggan Road in May 1931, Sean McMahon attended Rosemount Boys before winning a pre-11 Plus scholarship to St Columb’s. A natural academic and polymath, he loved his school years. Indeed, he later produced fond histories of both institutions - along with the definitive memoir of Foyle College, ‘A View the Foyle Commanding’.

After school, he enjoyed a very happy spell in post-war Belfast at Queen’s University, where he was awarded his first degree. (He subsequently took a Master’s at Magee.)

Returning to Derry, he joined the staff of St Columb’s College in 1953 as a maths teacher. But his particular passion was for the arts, and McMahon spent the bulk of his spare time there producing and/or directing the school shows, usually alongside his geography-teaching sidekick Eddie Mailey, whom he recruited on the latter’s very first day.

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McMahon’s shows were often the first outings for many who would go on to become performers on national and international stages, including: Phil Coulter, Gerard McSorley, Chief Justice Declan Morgan, Archbishop Eamon Martin and Snow Patrol’s Johnny McDaid. Amanda Burton, from Londonderry High School (and later of Silent Witness fame), was one of the first young women to appear alongside the boys, after the College wisely rescinded its drag requirement.

1971... Sean McMahon (third from left in back row) and members of the cast of Derry Theatre Club’s production of ‘The Queen and the Rebels’ which was staged at the Little Theatre, Orchard Street.1971... Sean McMahon (third from left in back row) and members of the cast of Derry Theatre Club’s production of ‘The Queen and the Rebels’ which was staged at the Little Theatre, Orchard Street.
1971... Sean McMahon (third from left in back row) and members of the cast of Derry Theatre Club’s production of ‘The Queen and the Rebels’ which was staged at the Little Theatre, Orchard Street.

McMahon and Mailey, along with Art Byrne, Mary Murphy, Marilyn Fraser, Gerry Downey, Jim Craig, Conor Porter, Terry Willman, Jean Flaherty, Bart O’Donnell, Denzil Stewart, Barney Toal and Dick MacGabhann, would go on to become mainstays of the Theatre Club in the early 1970s.

For almost two decades in the midst of the Troubles, this troupe brought dozens of top-quality productions - from both modern and classical dramatists, such as Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Synge, Brian Friel (Sean’s brother-in-law and great friend), Behan and Arbuzov - to packed houses at the Little Theatre.

McMahon preferred directing to acting - he worried that he played himself rather than the character. But he did act in a number of professional productions at St Columb’s Hall, and he was extremely proud to have been the voice of God in the Two Cathedrals’ production of Noye’s Fludde.

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Though he was very modest about it, McMahon was an international authority on Shakespeare, and was a regular guest lecturer at the annual summer schools in Stratford-Upon-Avon. Through his many literary connections, he was also asked to give seminars on the Bard in the US and in Sweden.

After taking early retirement from St Columb’s in 1988, Sean McMahon began his second career, as an author, with great relish. He would go on to write, produce, edit or compile more than eighty books (that we know of) across a wide variety of topics, collaborating with a large number of national and international publishing houses.

His works comprised histories, biographies, a number of anthologies on Irish writing co-produced with Art Byrne, and a series of pocket books - including one on Latin phrases. (McMahon was a polyglot, fluent in German, Irish and Italian, and could read several other languages). Shortly before his death, he completed a one-man play on Edgar Allan Poe, which he had intended to get performed at The Playhouse.

His magnum opus was the critically-acclaimed ‘Derry Anthology’, (Blackstaff, 2002), described by The Observer as ‘a widely roaming and colourful miscellany of writings from and about Derry’.

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A man of phenomenal energy (his secret was to get to bed early), McMahon also served on the Arts Council, edited colleagues’ scripts, mentored young writers, reviewed books for the national and local press, delivered lectures for history societies and at the Belfast Féile, chaired public debates, and volunteered as a reader at Pennyburn Chapel and with the Talking Newspaper for the Blind.

And not a week went by when he didn’t conquer the hard-line, cryptic crosswords in The Observer and The Spectator (aka ‘The Specky’ - ‘hate its politics, love its reviews…’) He was also very generous with his time to his many friends, even if he could never resist a well-timed quip.

He travelled widely - almost always in pursuit of culture - organising an annual half-term trip to the London West End to take in plays and musicals.

A fearsome table-quiz opponent, he had an encyclopaedic knowledge of many subjects, so much so that when any of his children are ever asked, ‘What did you ever do before Google?’, they automatically reply, ‘We asked Daddy.’

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McMahon’s other great pastime was cards. More than forty years ago, along with Frank D’Arcy, he established a Thursday night Solo whist school, which he ran with great punctiliousness, right up until his final hospitalisation. Players have included Art Byrne, Michael O’Donnell, Paul Wilkins, Brian Duffy, Eddie Mailey, Ken Thatcher, Jack McCauley, Dermot Carlin, and Garbhán Downey. (McMahon’s wife Mary, with whom he spent more than sixty happy years, used to refer to it as his ‘Men’s Group’, to get a rise out of him.)

The school will continue under Carlin’s stewardship, but McMahon’s sotto voce commentary and editor’s notes will be sorely missed.

On February 1 past, McMahon was in reflective mood as he received guests from the chair beside his bed. His adored, and adoring, children - Christa, Mar-Clare, Brian, Finn and Jill - would shortly afterwards begin a rota, along with Mary, to wait with him.

Sean recited from memory, Ó Raifteirí’s poem for St Brigid’s Day, ‘Anois teacht an Earraigh’, (‘Spring is now coming’), which tells of a man planning to hoist his sail and finally travel home across the sea.

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‘It contains one of the most inspirational but heart-breaking lines in Irish poetry,’ he said. ‘The poet is old, but when he goes home, and is back in the heart of his own people, he will be young again.’

Sean McMahon, 1931–2020, beidh sé arís óg.