When I first heard his voice on a crackly old cassette tape – a recording from 1984 – it made him seem even more real, his story more tangible, his recollections more vivid. I had spent many years researching and writing about how the Irish revolution played out in my locality in mid-Kerry. I first came across the name of Dan Mulvihill when I was writing about the Ballymacandy ambush, which occurred half a mile from my home in 1921, and in which Mulvihill was responsible for the death of at least one of the Black and Tans killed that...