Annie Crowley was one of eleven children born in the farmhouse at Kilnahone, outside the village of Ballygarvan in the County Cork. There were nearly twenty-four years between the oldest and youngest of the Crowley boys and girls, Their father died a few weeks after young Billy was born, and Jack the eldest emigrated to Australia not long after. Annie was six years old at the time, and a pupil at Ballygarvan National School, where the English language and English history were drilled into Irish children.
Then came the First World War, and Mary Crowley went off to become a nurse in...