Returning WB Yeats's coffin to Ireland

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WB Yeats in Walter de la Mare's garden at Taplow, 14th September, 1935.

The cemetary in Roquebrune, France, where Yeats was buried after his death in 1939. Photograph: Irish Defence Forces

A letter of thanks from Sean Murphy, Ireland’s ambassador to Paris, to foreign minister Robert Schuman for the way France handled the repatriation of Yeats’s remains.

Undertakers screwing down the lid of the outer coffin containing the body of WB Yeats outside the mortuary in the cemetery at Roquebrune

Gang-plank goes ashore from the first Irish warship, the LE Macha, to berth at any Mediterranean port. Seaman Joe Higgins of Youghal was first rating ashore on French soil - the ship was there to retrieve the remains of WB Yeats

Petty Officers and ratings of the LE Macha at the church of Our Lady of Notre Dame in Nice during their September 1948 mission to collect Yeats's body. Photograph: Irish Defence Forces

The first three pages of a letter dated August 12th, 1948, from Stanislas Ostrorog, the head of the French legation in Dublin, to Jacques Camille Paris, the head of European affairs at the foreign ministry in France

French guard WB Yeats's coffin in France before its removal from Roquebrune. Photograph: Irish Defence Forces

A the three-page report sent by the French legation in Ireland regarding the arrival of what it refers to as “the ashes of WB Yeats.”

Guard of Honour at the Town Hall, Sligo, before the arrival of the WB Yeats's cortege

A report by the diplomat Bernard Cailloux regarding Yeats's remains, from early 1948

A crowd attends the funeral in Sligo. Standing nearest the grave are his grieving family. Photograph: Haywood Magee/Picture Post/Getty Images

First Taoiseach of the Republic of Ireland Eamon de Valera with Irish dramatist Lennox Robinson at the funeral in Sligo. Photograph: Haywood Magee/Picture Post/Getty Images

A woman places a wreath on the grave, 9th October 1948. Photograph: Haywood Magee/Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

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