Author Description

The sixth volume of Documents on Irish Foreign Policy delivers a fascinating account of neutral Ireland during the war years. Volume VI demonstrates in gripping detail how Irish diplomats maintained neutrality despite Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s attempt to lure Ireland to join the war in winter 1939. It sheds light on the security crisis of 1940, when both a Nazi and a British invasion were feared. Volume VI publishes, for the first time, complete transcripts of the British-Irish defence co-operation talks that took place in late May 1940. It includes full reports from Irish diplomats abroad on the progress of the war in Europe and deals with areas as vast as the Russo-Finnish Winter War, the invasion and fall of France, the invasion of Norway, Churchill's rise to power, the Blitz, daily life in Berlin during war and the Luftwaffe attacks on Ireland. It reveals, in material hitherto unseen, the increasingly complex and highly charged nature of wartime British-Irish relations. The volume is the most comprehensive account ever published of Ireland's foreign policy during the first years of the so-called 'Emergency'.