Biographies of “second tier” figures from the Irish revolution and the early years of independent Ireland are in vogue. This biography of Leopold Kerney by Barry Whelan joins, for example, works by Eda Sagarra and Mary MacDiarmada on Timothy Smiddy and Art Ó Briain, respectively.

Kerney, a diplomatic colleague of Smiddy and Ó Briain, served the pre-independence Dáil Éireann government in Paris developing Franco-Irish trade. An avowed Irish Republican, the Anglophobic Kerney rejected the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty. He gave his allegiance to the anti-Treaty cause and its shadow foreign service, working from 1922 to 1926 under the guidance of anti-Treaty leader, lifelong mentor and friend, Éamon de Valera. In 1926 Kerney returned to the French commercial world he knew from his pre-1919 life.

In 1932, Kerney was recalled by de Valera, now Ireland's prime minister and minister for external affairs, to the diplomatic service. Kerney remained close to de Valera but was strongly disliked by Joseph Walshe, the service's permanent head. The feeling, which was the result of a long-standing personality clash and political differences, was mutual. Kerney served as trade attaché in Paris from 1932 to 1935 and as minister plenipotentiary to Spain from 1935 to his retirement in 1947. One last diplomatic outing was heading a 1947 trade mission to South America.

Such was Kerney's diplomatic career; however, it is presented by Whelan within a specific paradigm that argues that Kerney has been unfairly judged by his diplomatic colleagues and by historians alike as a result of three episodes following his return to diplomacy in 1932. Whelan now seeks to set the record, as he sees it, straight. Firstly, Kerney's involvement in the freeing of Irish socialist republican Frank Ryan from Nationalist custody into the hands of German intelligence during the Spanish civil war and his related contacts with Irish republicans with IRA connections was opaque. Secondly, contemporaries and historians have questioned the rationale for his contacts with German intelligence operatives in Madrid during the Second World War. Finally, the Irish academic T. D. Williams's portrayal of Kerney's wartime contacts with these operatives has undermined his reputation, despite Kerney's having won a libel action against Williams. These episodes have called his conduct, which was already tainted by his anti-Treaty stance, into question.

Seeking to make the case for Kerney as an honorable man who lived by his republican principles and put his country first, Whelan's is an emphatic account of Kerney's life and career—one often verging on hagiography. Kerney's enemies, particularly Walshe, are built into monstrous figures. Kerney's causes are deemed just; his achievements often portrayed as historically significant acts. Though Whelan allows for character flaws, Kerney generally gets the benefit of the doubt, receiving only minor criticism for questionable actions, such as the question of whether Kerney had fully considered what Frank Ryan's fate in Nazi Germany might ultimately be and failing to really critically examine the nature of Kerney's friend Budge Mulcahy's alleged ties to the IRA given her Republican family background. The book's perspective parallels an unattributed quotation from de Valera on the back cover: “there is nothing that can be said about Mr Kerney except that which is good.”

Whelan gives little quarter to opposing perspectives and to those, including this reviewer, who have critically questioned Kerney's actions. In considering this point there is a significant methodological drawback to the book. It is often based on the Leopold Kerney Private Archive, a collection closed to public scrutiny. Its extent and content are not outlined by Whelan. Accordingly, readers cannot check or interrogate Whelan's argument through one of the major collections of primary sources underpinning the book. It would have been valuable to Kerney's case if this project had also enabled his private papers to be opened. Until they are, we will not have heard the last word on Leopold Kerney.

Despite this biography, suspicions will remain over Kerney's conduct. During a discussion on page 170, for example, of Kerney's nephew, Michael's, unsuccessful attempts to join the British Special Operations Executive, in order to argue for Kerney's discretion and tact, Whelan cites a letter in the British National Archives from an SOE agent who knew Kerney, but he neglects to include the agent's telling point that Kerney “is usually talked of as neutral, but he seems always to be included with the Axis people on government invitations and I myself, although we have never talked about the matter, would be inclined to regard him as more pro-Axis than pro-British” (TNA MS 9/834, unsigned letter to Jones, 4 September 1942). Why Kerney engendered these suspicions is never satisfactorily answered, as Whelan's primary intention throughout is to make the case for the correctness of Kerney's conduct rather than to explain why he was such a divisive figure.

More widely, had Kerney any defining impact on Irish foreign policy? Was he really a “revolutionary diplomat?” The foreign service Kerney joined in its formative years changed out of recognition in the years following his retirement. Led instead by the Department of Finance, Ireland embraced export-led growth in the late 1950s. Kerney's interwar ideas and trade ventures had little impact. A new generation of professional technocrats took over; the diplomats of the revolutionary generation became the stuff of history.

In closing it would be remiss not to mention that further copy editing would have helped remove episodes of generalization (e.g., 31, 36, 49), excessive speculation unsupported by evidence (e.g., 188–91), and factual errors and stylistic and syntactic weaknesses. In particular, readers might note that Ireland was not “precluded from external representation” by the 1921 Treaty (60), Ireland did not appoint its first ambassador until 1946, heads of legations until then titled minister plenipotentiary and envoy extraordinary (95, 218), Williams's wartime Cambridge record in Peterhouse archives shows no evidence that he worked for British intelligence as alleged (269), and surely the term “mental deficiencies” to describe the intellectual disability suffered by Kerney's brother Mario (81) is inappropriate.

Kerney is a strong character for a biography: a transnational businessman turned diplomat in years of profound international change, the outsider who did not always play by the rules. A less polemical account would have sufficed to tell his life story. There is still ample space for the definitive biography of Leopold Kerney.