‘He was small in stature, massive in achievement’

“WHEN you shall these unlucky deeds relate, speak of me as I am.”

The quote is also from Othello but not the one that Charles J Haughey chose to use when he retired from the Dáil. It is the passage in the Shakespeare play that immediately follows the one that he did use: “I have done the State some service. They know’t.”

Taken together they sum up the paradox and contradictions of the most controversial and divisive public figure Ireland has produced in the modern era.