Dorothy Macardle - a teacher, playwright, journalist and novelist - is best known as the author of The Irish Republic (1937), the first history of the revolutionary period from an anti-Treaty perspective. The manner in which the book endorsed de Valera's decisions during the period allowed many of her contemporaries to view her as merely his adjunct or mouthpiece. Yet Macardle, as Leeann Lane reveals in this short biography, was beholden to no male politician. While in many ways she had a supportive relationship with de Valera on a political level, the issues that caused fault lines to form between them are also explored.