The Long Fellow who had the last laugh

AFTER completing my doctoral dissertation on Irish neutrality, Tim Pat Coogan, the then editor of The Irish Press, wrote that his newspaper would be interested in publishing a series of articles based on the papers of David Gray, the American wartime minister to Ireland, but he added his own health warning.

As I was in Texas, he apparently did not realise I was Irish.

He noted that President Éamon de Valera’s son Vivion, was his boss, and he underlined Vivion’s name in the letterhead, adding he was sure I would write with an historian’s dispassion. It seemed like a patent hint that I had better be favourable.