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.