<iframe src="//www.googletagmanager.com/ns.html?id=GTM-K3L4M3" height="0" width="0" style="display:none;visibility:hidden">

Books

Was Éamon de Valera Ireland’s Franco?

A vast number emigrated during de Valera’s rigid theocracy, which lasted over half a century — a fact he barely acknowledged, according to Ronan Flanning’s biography,

14 November 2015

9:00 AM

14 November 2015

9:00 AM

Éamon de Valera: A Will to Power Ronan Fanning

Faber, pp.320, £20, ISBN: 9780571312054

A highlight of this year’s Dublin Theatre Festival was the Rough Magic Theatre Company’s production of The Train, a musical by Arthur Riordan and Bill Whelan. Political theatre at its wittiest and craziest, it told the story of the fledgling Irish Women’s Liberation Movement’s publicised trip in 1971 to Belfast to buy contraceptives, ostentatiously importing these banned Satanic devices back into the Republic, where the law obeyed the writ of the Catholic church.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Subscribe for just $2 a week

Try a month of The Spectator Australia absolutely free and without commitment. Not only that but – if you choose to continue – you’ll pay just $2 a week for your first year.

  • Unlimited access to spectator.com.au and app
  • The weekly edition on the Spectator Australia app
  • Spectator podcasts and newsletters
  • Full access to spectator.co.uk
Or

Unlock this article

REGISTER

Available from the Spectator Bookshop, £17, Tel: 08430 600033. Roy Foster’s many books on Ireland include Luck and the Irish, Modern Ireland, The Irish Story and a two-volume life of W.B. Yeats.

You might disagree with half of it, but you’ll enjoy reading all of it. Try your first month for free, then just $2 a week for the remainder of your first year.


Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator Australia readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Close