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June 26th, 1957DOROTHY MACARDLE was the author of The Irish Republic, the classic account of the struggle for independence and the Civil War from the anti-Treaty viewpoint, and a strong supporter of Eamon de Valera. She was also a journalist, as well as a novelist and dramatist, and found herself the inadvertent victim of Irish censorship during the second World War over an issue of the ground-breaking British Picture Postphoto journalism magazine. In this column in today’s newspaper in 1957 – the month before the then ailing Picture Postclosed and a year before her death – she explained how it had come about.

Among old magazines I have found my single, treasured copy of the issue of Picture Post dated July 27th, 1940. Who else in Ireland possesses one? Nobody, I suppose, although “The Story of Ireland” is the cover-title for that week, and “The Faith of Éire” is the caption under the charming cover-photograph .