On the various encounters with the iconic Irish politican down the decades... For Sunday Miscellany on RTÉ Radio 1, listen to Dev by Charles Lysaght above.
In the Ireland into which I was born in the early 1940s nobody loomed larger than our Taoiseach Eamon de Valera. He was widely revered as a national saviour but also distrusted, even hated, by many others. His merits, or lack thereof, were endlessly debated. My mother admired him; my father did not.
Most mornings Dev (as he was known) made his way by car to his office in town from his home in Cross Avenue, which was situated at the back of his beloved Blackrock College At Merrion Gates he got out of his chauffeur driven car and walked, over six foot tall, along a path on the seaward side of Strand Road. He was followed by a bodyguard on foot. The car crawled behind ready to pick him up lower down the road to complete his journey workwards to Merrion Street.
I cannot have been more than three or four years of age when I took it upon myself to welcome him as he passed our house a few hundred yards short of Sandymount Tower. "Horray Mr Dunleary; Horray Mr Dunleary" I used to shout across the road, his name muddled in my childhood mind with the nearby township. I believe I did not even elicit a sideways glance as he strode past...
Listen to more from Sunday Miscellany here.
