It was sometimes claimed that Winston Churchill was born in Ireland: he was not - but he did spend the early years of his childhood, from the age of two, at what is now Áras an Uachtaráin (then the Viceregal Lodge), when his grandfather, the Duke of Marlborough, was Lord-Lieutenant. As a small child, he very nearly died when an Irish donkey threw him, but he wrote affectionately about childhood memories of Ireland.

Later on, Winston would be regarded by the generation who lived through World War II as "anti-Irish": he was bitterly resented for the disparaging remarks he made about Irish neutrality; he described "Éire", as "neutral - but skulking" and for the barely veiled threats hinting at an invasion of Ireland.

Éamon de Valera gained enormous popularity during that war for the calm and measured way he rebutted Churchill's verbal salvoes: although it must be admitted that Dev had the advantage over Churchill that he was stone cold sober whereas Winston was continuously on the brandy and champagne. In 1943, Churchill was openly mocked in a programme broadcast on what was then Radio Éireann, to the immense applause of the studio audience.

Yet the period of he 1939-45 war was something of an aberration in Churchill's relationship with this country: yes, he was livid about Ireland's neutrality, and furious that De Valera would not allow the Royal Navy to use the Irish naval ports. He also spoke with rancour, in 1945, about De Valera "frolicking with the Germans", which irked the Irish public (though Dev's condolences on Hitler's death were less than wise.)

As a young man, Winston Churchill had been a member of the Liberal Party, and spoke in favour of Irish Home Rule in Manchester, and in Belfast, where he was pelted with wet fish and hanged in effigy. In 1913, at a crucial moment in the Ulster Unionist crisis, he advised King George V to bear in mind that Irish Home Rule had Parliamentary support and must be honoured. Of course, Winston couldn't, then, accept the idea of an Irish Republic - but he was not opposed to Ireland's affirmation of nationhood, and he gave full support to the Free State after 1921.

And by the later 1940s, his attitude reverted to benevolence. Roy Foster recounts how Churchill had a sort of spiritualist encounter with his dead father, who asked how Ireland was faring.

Winston replied: "They [the Irish] are much more friendly to us than they used to be. They have built up a cultured Roman Catholic system in the South. There has been no anarchy or confusion.

"They are getting more happy and prosperous. The bitter past is fading."

In November 1948, he told the Irish envoy in London, his old friend John Dulanty: "I still hope for a united Ireland. You must get those fellows in from the North, though you can't do it by force. There is not, and never was, any bitterness in my heart towards your country."

In 1953, there was a last, cordial meeting between Churchill and De Valera. Winston's son, Randolph, said that his father had regretted if his wartime words against Ireland's neutrality were harsh. It was all about the context of the time - in 1940, Britain believed she would go under at any moment.

It was graceful that RTÉ televised Churchill's funeral in January 1965: he was a great Englishman, if pugnacious and quixotic.

Interestingly, a new generation has taken an interest in Winston Churchill, not because of his political career - but because of his struggles with depression, his "Black Dog", which reveal him in an altogether more human light.

Indo Review