Michael Russell: the façade of neutral even-handedness Ireland insisted on, even as the death camps were liberated, meant the old show wasn’t only pointless, it was becoming unsavoury. A favourite saying of my grandmother’s was, ‘Get a name for early rising and you can sleep till noon’. Not a maxim for Éamon de Valera, you’d have thought, but in Irish neutrality in the second World War, perhaps he had something of its spirit. The reasons for neutrality were understandably stronger on realpolitik than principle, but once Dev’s decision had infuriated the British and delighted the Nazis, it was only necessary...