Éamon de Valera retired from public life and vacated Áras an Uachtaráin in the summer of 1972 and moved, with his wife Sinéad, to a nursing home.

She died at the start of 1975 and Éamon passed away just months later at the age of 92. The end of an era.

For half a year, I’ve been immersed in his story while producing RTÉ’s Dev: Rise Rule to mark the 50th anniversary of his death.

The second episode of the series airs tomorrow evening, exploring the high and low points of his rule.

Here are ten surprising things I learned while making the series.

1. Dev the Commuter

As a toddler, Dev was sent to his mother’s homeplace of Bruree on the Limerick/Cork border to be reared by his grandmother. He was bright and attended the Christian Brother School in Charleville nine kilometres away.

As a boy, Dev commuted from Bruree to school in Charleville every morning. Money was tight so he took the train one way and walked home. The Great Southern and Western Railway enabled a commuter life from the depths of the countryside to the nearest towns and cities!

Sadly, Bruree station closed to passenger traffic in 1934. Who knows what course Irish history might have taken if Dev had not been able to take the train!

2. Almost Professor Dev

de Valera was a fan of maths. He famously scratched a quaternion equation into his cell walls of Kilmainham jail.

He was........

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