Independence Memories: Entertaining, if unfocused, tales from ‘everyday people’ of life in the Irish Free State

Journalist Valerie Cox has put together 22 interviews with people about what it was like to live through the early days of the Irish Free State, a time that not everybody looks back at with nostalgia

Black and Tans and British soldiers at the junction of Abbey Street and O’Connell Street, Dublin, during the War of Independence. Picture: Getty

HISTORY

Independence Memories: A People’s Portrait of the Early Days of the Irish Nation

By Valerie Cox

Hachette Books Ireland, €15.99

Valerie Cox has a major problem with the way Ireland treats its senior citizens. The Wicklow journalist recently took a successful discrimination case against her former employers in RTÉ for forcing her to retire at the age of 65.

She also ran (less successfully) for Dáil Eireann last year on a platform aimed squarely ...