[2] Darrell Figgis was born at Glen na Smoil, Palmerstown Park, Rathmines in Dublin, the son of Arthur William Figges, tea merchant, and Mary Anne Deane.

As a young man he worked in London at the tea brokerage owned by his uncle and it was at this time that he began to develop his interest in literature and literary criticism.

This group of gun-runners included Molly and Erskine Childers, Mary Spring Rice, Alice Stopford Green and Roger Casement.

[8] As well as the Childers and Spring Rice, Asgard was crewed by Captain Gordon Shephard of the Royal Flying Corps, and Patrick McGinley and Charles Duggan, two fishermen from Gola Island, County Donegal.

[9] At this time the Royal Navy was patrolling the Irish Sea in anticipation of imminent war with Germany, and Figgis was tasked with taking a motor boat to Lambay Island to signal to the Asgard the all-clear.

[10] By his own account, he was unable to persuade the skipper of the pilot vessel to put to sea, as one of the worst storms in many years had been raging.

Figgis, accompanied by Seán McGarry, watched Asgard helplessly from Howth pier until Erskine, with Molly at the helm, decided to take a calculated risk and sailed into the harbour.

Against the odds, the conspiracy with Casement, Eoin MacNeill and Bulmer Hobson to buy rifles in Germany and land them safely in Ireland had succeeded.

His wife Millie wrote to The New Age, detailing her husband's conditions in jail and what she saw as the excessively broad terms by which he was interned under the Defence of the Realm Act 1914.

Shortly after, Figgis was one of four recently released internees who travelled to the South Longford constituency to campaign for Joseph McGuinness in the by-election caused by the death of John Phillips.

He was extremely critical of the Collins/De Valera Pact for the June 1922 elections which was an attempt to avoid a split in the Sinn Féin party and, more importantly, in the IRA.

We did not consider him a menace, he was too much the lightweight but he annoyed us with his waspish stings...Some of us held him tipped back on his swivel chair while one man produced a glittering razor.

This was future Lord Mayor of Dublin, Robert Briscoe, at the time of this disclosure the most prominent and respected politician from the Jewish community in Ireland.

In a letter to Collins on 13 June, his fiancée Kitty Kiernan wrote the following:"Poor Darrell Figgis lost his nice red beard.

Douglas, who in his memoirs admitted his dislike for Figgis, brought with him onto the committee James McNeill, Clement J. France and R.J.P Mortished who had worked closely with him at the Irish White Cross thus consolidating further Collins' control.

A central issue of contention was whether the service should be run and controlled directly by the State or operated commercially by an Irish Broadcasting Company.

Walsh's own preferences for a private syndicate, which would include Belton and business acquaintances from Cork, together with his personal animosity towards Figgis, were evident from the outset.

Belton's apparent connections with senior finance and political figures in London, including Lord Beaverbrook, were also matters of considerable disquiet.

A year later, Figgis' new love, a 21-year-old Catholic woman named Rita North, died, due to medical difficulties, when Dr Lake tried to surgically remove an already dead child.

[31] Figgis himself committed suicide in a London boarding-house, in Granville Street, Finsbury, on 26 October 1925, just a week after giving evidence at North's inquest.