Did de Valera get it wrong in his handling of partition?

IN the past week we had posthumous pronouncements from both Judge Seán O’Leary and the late US President Gerald Ford.

Their views might be considered contentious but they are mild compared to Seán MacEntee’s scream from the grave about de Valera’s handling of partition in the latest volume of Documents on Irish Foreign Policy.

Published jointly by the Royal Irish Academy, National Archives, and Department of Foreign Affairs, the book has a number of fascinating documents covering the years 1937 to 1939.