Just an amusing snippet from an Irish Times letter writer in today's paper:
"...My father used to say that the reason that nobody had named a street in Ireland after de Valera was it had proved impossible to find one that was long enough or crooked enough."
I liked that one, I have to say.
Funny how the most enduring patriots in the Irish popular consciousness are the ones who died gloriously, before they had a chance to live on and mess things up.
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5 comments:
having grown up at the end of Dev's era it is surprising how they dropped the brand. I saw a few years ago a film shot but never shown by RTE in full of Dev giving a speech about the great things he did for Irleand and an elderly man who was in the GPO and wearing his medlas heckled Dev as a political failure, and he was dragged out of the hall depsite being on crutches.
Bloody hell, John. That's some scene... so that's the freedom they were fighting for, then.
I forgot to mention if anyone is interested there is a BBC documentary on you tube called
"DeValera Irelands Hated Hero"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2Y7YAy_bT0a
Dev was the personification of the cute hoor, in 1958, the late Dr Noel Browne asked Dev in the Dail what he did with the $5million he collected in 1920 to finance the war. Dev nearly fainted and refused to answer ,as Noel Browne sugggested that the money went into the setting up of the Irish Press. The master stroke that Dev pulled was to announce that evening he was retiring and running as president. And of course the story was killed off..
He's the grandaddy of them all, John. I find it funny that O'Cuiv attempts to bask in his afterglow.
Am about to look at the documentary now, thanks.
I speculate that if Collins had not been killed would Ireland have joined WW2 on the British side? I also speculate that Dev had more to do with the death of Collins that has been made out. My research on this question drew two interesting facts.There was never an inquest held into the death of Michael Collins contrary to law and secondly, all files relating to his death were destryoed in the early 1930's.
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