Opening paragraphs..................

Percolating down to us through a process of selective amnesia, recollections by contemporary admirers (and detractors), the story of Eamon de Valera's childhood and youth comes across as a combination of Aesopian fable and Lincolnesque progression from log cabin to White House, laced along the way with a liberal dash of what is known in Ireland as the "cute hoor" approach or, in less Rabelaisian societies, peasant cunning.

-Tim Pat Coogan,  Eamon de Valera:  The Man Who Was Ireland