Jonathan Todd

When visiting Dublin last weekend I was told that it was in the room that is now the Eamon De Valera suite in the Shelbourne Hotel, overlooking St. Stephen’s Green, that De Valera signed the constitution of the Irish republic. Contention surrounds De Valera’s role in the journey towards this constitution. Why did he stand aside for Michael Collins in negotiations with the Westminster government in 1921 only to tip Ireland into civil war after Collins returned with the most generous package the Irish could have hoped for? Why did he later – after Collins was one of thousands of casualties of this civil war – move towards the republic via a strategy that amounted to the gradualism earlier advocated by Collins? He may have been one of only nine people in the world capable of understanding Einstein’s theory of relativity during the scientist’s lifetime, so he was no dummy, but his political journey has always struck me as perplexing. Michael Fitzgerald has argued that “his political achievement was marked by its greater dedication to ideology than to people, which is certainly in keeping with HFA/ ASP”. So, perhaps, undiagnosed autism is the key to understanding the enigma that is De Valera, which might seem to stretch credulity, but David Owen sees mental illness amongst leaders as being more important in explaining political outcomes than is usually recognised.