One good reason for not geting into all that, McGrath, is that the English Tories had sod all to do with it. Collins signed up for the best deal available, and I've never seen it seriously argued either by journos writing the first draft of history or in the judgment of subsequent analysts that he could have held out for more. Or that L-G's threat of war was a bluff.

I don't see how Dev's huffing and puffing back in Dublin was going to alter the balance of the British parliament to produce a result more to his liking. Anyway, Collins brought the treaty back and the Dail supported it. After all, it went beyond the wildest dreams of the 1916 romantics. But at this point Dev decided that representative democracy had its shortcomings and resorted to armed ocnflict instead. It achieved nothing of course, and was grievously destructive.

On what basis do you implicate Collins or Bonar Law or anyone else in that catastrophe? I would have thought it was pretty obvious that if Dev had managed to bring himself to continue working in partnership with Collins, a 32-counties republic would have been achieved long before now.