Irish novelist Liam O'Flaherty publishes The Informer

Eamon de Valera's faction, Fianna Fáil (Warriors of Ireland), enters mainstream Irish life as a political party

Irish Free State president Kevin O'Higgins is murdered by members of the IRA on his way to mass

De Valera and his party, the Fianna Fáil, finally take their seats in the Dáil

W.B. Yeats's new volume of poems, The Tower, includes 'Sailing to Byzantium'

The Irish National War Memorial opens in Dublin, designed by Edwin Lutyens in a garden setting

British inventor Frank Whittle takes out a patent for a jet engine

The Irish government classifies the Irish Republican Army as an illegal organization

Fianna Fáil wins enough seats in the Irish Free State's election for Eamon de Valera to form a government

De Valera withholds farmers' annuities from Britain, provoking British tariffs and a trade war

Fine Gael is the name given to a new political party in Ireland, formed by the merger of several smaller groups

De Valera introduces a new constitution, changing the name of the Irish Free State to Eire (Gaelic for Ireland)

De Valera's new constitution for Eire lays claim to the six counties of northern Ireland

Irish author Samuel Beckett publishes his first novel, Murphy

James Joyce's Finnegans Wake is published after 17 years in the making

Irish author Flann O'Brien publishes his first novel, At Swim-Two-Birds

De Valera declares that Eire will be neutral in any forthcoming European war

Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman is rejected by numerous publishers before becoming, decades later, his best-known novel

Lord Craigavon (previously James Craig) dies in office after nineteen years as northern Ireland's prime minister

Churchill says of the Battle of Britain pilots that never has so much been owed by so many to so few

Enigma is now being decoded fast enough at Bletchley to give the Allies advance warning of German plans

The British electorate dismisses Winston Churchill, giving the Labour party and Clement Attlee a landslide victory

Eire is renamed the republic of Ireland and withdraws from the Commonwealth, severing the last link with the British crown

The British government declares that northern Ireland will remain British unless the parliament in Stormont decides otherwise

Samuel Beckett's play Waiting for Godot ('En attendant Godot') is first performed in French in Paris