Sir Theobald Mathew, KBE, MC (4 November 1898 – 29 February 1964) was a British lawyer who served as Director of Public Prosecutions from 1944 to 1964, making him the longest-serving DPP.
During World War I, he served with the Irish Guards, and was awarded the Military Cross in 1918.
Mathew was called to the bar by Lincoln's Inn in 1921, but quit the bar to train as a solicitor in 1925, articling at Charles Russell & Co., whose senior partner, Sir Charles Russell, was his wife's uncle.
He was appointed Director of Public Prosecutions in 1944, having been recommended to the Prime Minister by Herbert Morrison, the Home Secretary, who had been impressed by Mathew's performance.
[1] In 1960 he reluctantly authorised the prosecution of Penguin Books for obscenity after they published Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H.