Eamon de Valera is the most remarkable man in the history of modern Irel&. Much as Churchill personified British resistance to Hitler & de Gaulle personified the freedom of France, de Valera personified Irish independence. From his emergence in the aftermath of the 1916 rebellion as the republican leader, he bestrode Irish politics like a colossus for more than fifty years. On the eve of the centenary of the Irish Revolution, one of Ireland`s most eminent historians explains why Eamon de Valera was such a divisive figure that he has never
- until now
- received the recognition he deserves. This biography reconciles an acknowledgement of de Valera`s catastrophic failure in 1921-22, when his petulant rejection of the Anglo-Irish Treaty shaped the
Dimensions of a bloody civil war, with an appreciation of his subsequent greatness as the statesman who single-handedly severed the ties with Britain & defined nationalist Ireland`s sense of itself.