Eamon de Valera is the most single most consequential figure of Ireland’s twentieth century. He was a leader of the Easter Rising, the figurehead of the anti-Treaty rebels during the dark days of the Civil War and later, as the founder of Fianna Fáil and President of Ireland, the pivotal figure in the birth of the Republic.

In this, the concluding volume of David McCullagh’s monumental new life of the revolutionary and statesman, we join De Valera in 1932 as he takes the reins of power for the first time, and follow him as he confronts one challenge after another – the Trade War, the Emergency, the drafting of Bunracht na hEireann, the North, the declaration of the Republic – and sets about gradually remaking a sovereign Ireland in his own image.

David McCullagh is the author of The Reluctant Taoiseach, his acclaimed biography of John A. Costello, and A Makeshift Majority, a history of the first inter-party government. He began working as a journalist with the Evening Press before joining RTE, where he currently presents the broadcaster’s flagship current affairs programme, Primetime. The first part of this work, entitled De Valera: Rise (1882-1932), was published by Gill Books in 2017.