Dangerous Ambition: The Making of Eamon De Valera

In 1926 Éamon de Valera founded Fianna Fáil, the most powerful political party in Ireland for much of the past century. His early life was a story of stark rearing and thwarted ambitions that led to him to gamble his wife and children on the outcome of a rebellion organised by others. He had little interest in politics before 1916. Born in New York, he was raised as Eddie de Valera in rural Limerick – his mother absent, his father gone. A lonely child, he became ‘Éamon’ later. Reared to be a labourer, Eddie got into Blackrock College and graduated from the Royal University of Ireland – rare breaks for a boy of his social class. Reading, rugby, hunting and prayer were his pastimes. In 1924 de Valera left jail after serving just eleven months for his part in a vicious Civil War. His future looked bleak. But destiny found him a place in history. This is the story of what made him who he was by 1926.