The Michael Collins/Kitty Kiernan letters, acquired at auction by former Fine Gael minister, Peter Barry for £43,000 three years ago, are being handed over, believe it or not, to none other than Sile de Valera.
The Minister for Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and Islands will accept the 300 letters of the Dearest Kitty collection on behalf of the State on Thursday week for a special summer exhibition at the National Library. They have already been displayed at the Cork Public Museum and have been preserved, catalogued and bound. When he acquired them, Barry said he wanted to keep them in the country. "They are an important part of that era. They demonstrate a soft side to Collins which I was afraid would be submerged in the gunman image. He was an ordinary young man who could fall in love and could write to her every day while engaged in important negotiations."
Barry said that if anything could be deduced from the letters it is that the only love in Collins's life was Kitty. "As for Lady Lavery, I don't know if there was anything physical in it. Only two people can know and they are both dead. Even if it is true it doesn't matter."
Of late, Collins has been greatly lionised at the expense of de Valera in books and films, but Dev's granddaughter holds no grudge. She recently told a radio interviewer who asked her to name her political hero of the past, excluding her grandfather, that it was Michael Collins or James Connolly but since Collins admired Connolly, it had to be Connolly.