Lawyer, soldier, journalist and playwright, David Gray cuts an unlikely diplomatic figure. David Gray took up the post of US Minister to Ireland in 1940. His memoir of that year, ‘Behind the Emerald Curtain’, written when Gray was 89, is published here for the first time.

Gray was a passionate Anglophile who staunchly opposed Irish neutrality and clashed with de Valera. He had particular and controversial views on the Irish. Better known as a journalist and playwright than as a diplomat, his combination of strident reportage and lyrical description makes this a vivid memoir. It contains diary entries, letters to Roosevelt, secret documents and press extracts, and accounts of crucial conversations with de Valera and other key figures.

The text is fully annotated with an introduction by Paul Bew, MRIA and Professor of Politics at Queen’s University Belfast.