Mighty this whale was though, and it would not be brought down. It dragged his vessel for leagues, eventually in to the heart of the storm. Our Irish sailor persisted, trying every trick to bring down his nemesis, but to no avail. The whale heaved his ship through the storm, battering it with waves and weather until it was barely seaworthy.

That sex existed in Eamon de Valera's Ireland is a matter of record, but on some evidence hard to believe. Looking back, the culture is in the position of teenage children who find it difficult to imagine that their own parents ever had sex at all. No positive images of sex or sexuality present themselves from those times, which in practice lasted until at least the early 1970s, when Ireland's membership of the EU began to enable citizens to challenge aspects of restrictive sexual controls for the first time.