You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. The intelligence proved accurate and de Valera, along with Sinn Féin MPs who followed his advice, were arrested; Collins and others evaded incarceration. As the war began in earnest, de Valera travelled to the United States for an extended speaking tour to raise funds for the outlawed Republican government. This is the first book to concentrate on an aspect of his life and work hitherto overlooked: the crucial role played by women in his personal and working life.

Clarke had sent out the first post-Rising communiqué to the IRB, declaring the Rising to be only the beginning and directing nationalists to prepare for "the next blow". From his boyhood in an overwhelmingly female household in West Cork onwards, women brought out the best in him and he brought out the best in women. Living up to his reputation “may have even cost him his life”; this was what De Valera had referred to in January 1921 as “your fame or notoriety if you prefer it”.

After the death of Collins, his concern for the plight of northern Catholics was made clear by the Belfast IRA commander Seamus Woods "Of all the Dublin government ministers, Collins had been most deeply concerned about the fate of northern Catholics.

However he stated on the record that "there will be no compromise and no negotiations with any British Government until Ireland is recognised as an independent republic. In 1920, following Westminster's prominent announcements that it had the Irish insurgents on the run, Collins and his Squad killed several people in a series of coordinated raids, including a number of British secret service agents. In this spirit and with the organising efforts of moderates on both sides the Collins–de Valera "Pact" was created.Under Griffith's policy, Collins and other advocates of the "physical-force" approach to independence gained the cooperation of Sinn Féin, while agreeing to disagree with Griffith's moderate ideas of a dual monarchy solution based on the Hungarian model. He would prove to be fastidious in record keeping all of his life and would ensure that all receipts for expenses incurred are properly kept. It did not establish the fully independent republic that Collins himself had shortly before demanded as a non-negotiable condition.

However, Ireland as a state gained independence from Great Britain in 1921 on the conclusion of the Anglo-Irish Treaty that saw the establishment of the Irish Free State. Clarke appointed Collins Secretary to the National Aid and Volunteers Dependents Fund and subsequently passed on to him the secret organisational information and contacts which she had held in trust for the independence movement. I so much enjoyed this marvellous book and its sheer joy in telling us the life story of the real architect of modern Ireland. Hardly the stuff of proper history but it lends a certain feel to the book that I really appreciate, as a side to the hardcore history of the middle chapters. Collins was criticised for these tactics but cited the universal war-time practice of executing enemy spies who were, in his words, "hunting victims for execution.

The camp proved an excellent opportunity for networking with physical-force republicans from all over the country, of which he became a key organiser. The book does, however, do justice to a multilayered revolution and its manifold visual representations.