In 1948, when Jack Lynch had been selected by Fianna Fβil and decided, after much thought, to run for the Dβil, he and his wife, Maureen, were on their way to hand in the nomination papers. She stopped him in the doorway of a shop in central Cork and said she wasn't fully happy about it all. They decided to toss a coin.
It fell in his favour.
The story, one of many, appears in Jack Lynch - Hero in Crisis by Bruce Arnold, which will be launched by the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, in the National Gallery on Wednesday. It will be a great political gathering, with Mary Harney, Garret FitzGerald and Tony O'Reilly - who is hosting the event with Merlin Publishing - all billed to speak. Maureen Lynch has given her co-operation.
Arnold, a prolific author with 16 books to his credit, is an immense fan. Although the title refers to the period 1969-1973, and Arnold addresses what Lynch knew and when he knew it, the subject is seen in the broad context.
"I instinctively regard him as heroic in the way he faced the problems of Ireland, the North, Anglo-Irish relations and society at that time. I see him as a heroic figure in how Ireland thought about itself and about the use and tradition of violence and the unfinished business in relation to the North.
"He changed the hearts and minds of the government, of his own party and of the people generally. It was a change on which I think all subsequent developments on this island depended.
"That it the Arms Crisis happened under him meant there wasn't a mess, and it allowed all who followed, like Cosgrave and FitzGerald and Reynolds, to go forward by consensus. Even Haughey was constrained by what Lynch achieved. In his debate with Margaret Thatcher, Haughey was gripped by what Lynch had achieved, and he could not get out from under what he had done in 1969-1970 . . . He was heroic in confronting those trying to wreck the consensual approach."
It was significant, says Arnold, that throughout his career, Lynch's enemies, as well as the idle, presented him as vacillating and as someone who had to be pushed and shoved both into politics and then leadership.
"I prove this is not true. He was determined to do it. There was no vacillation. He accepted within days the inevitability of being leader when Lemass told him he was leaving. He was a man of iron; just as he was on the playing field."