Sir, – In reviewing Colin Murphy's play The Treaty (November 22nd), Ronan McGreevy becomes the latest person to describe Frank Pakenham's book Peace by Ordeal (1935) as somehow "definitive".
The Treaty talks still have great relevance, both for our relations to Britain and for this State’s understanding of itself. A specific purpose of my new book Midnight in London: The Anglo-Irish Treaty Crisis 1921 is to break Pakenham’s grip on the discourse about what happened then.
His influential work is too often a sole source for later historians. Based largely on it, for example, it has been frequently claimed (as Murphy does in his otherwise commendable new play) that in November 1921 Griffith “secretly” assented to or initialled or even “signed” a vital memo of British policy on Ulster. He did not. In my book I reproduce the relevant memo, absent any sign of Griffith assenting.
The UK cabinet secretary’s diary and other contemporary documents indicate that Griffith repeatedly refused to endorse that memo’s proposal on behalf of himself or the other plenipotentiaries.
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Pakenham’s version was based largely on a chat with former Tory leader Austen Chamberlain, who refused to show him relevant documents. – Yours, etc,
COLUM KENNY,
Professor Emeritus,
Dublin City University.