The Irish Times

Michael Scott

A documentary on the life and work of Michael Scott will be broadcast by RTÉ next week. Directed by his daughter, CiaríScott, it is remarkably frank - a brave and often moving film, rather than a dry retrospective. It reveals, for example, that Michael's mother drowned in the Dodder when he was 15 and the Catholic Church denied her a proper funeral, having deemed her death a suicide. Anthony, his own eldest son, was diagnosed as schizophrenic at UCD and later committed suicide. Another son, architect Niall Scott, recalls that the Geragh - the house his father built in Sandycove in 1938 - was so cold that they might all have died from hypothermia. He also talks about how his mother coped with her husband being such a "ladies man".