John Brennan (Madame Sidney Gifford Czira) was a woman of the twentieth century, and along with her five sisters, the Giffords, she contributed to many of the developments of that time. Born Sidney Gifford in 1889 into a well-off Protestant unionist family, she was attracted to the nationalist cause and started publishing articles as a school girl for Arthur Griffith’s Sinn Fein. For the next 65 years she was well-known as a journalist, broadcaster and political activist, and counted as her friends and associates, the men and women who were leaders of the nationalist struggle.

In The Years Flew By, her memoir first published in 1974, she recounts her memories of these people. More than biographical portraits, she gives an insider’s view which is perceptive, entertaining and enlightening and adds greatly to the study of the political developments of the early decades of the last century. She also provides us with a vivid picture of some of the customs and social life in Dublin in the early twentieth century, and recounts the exciting developments in theatre during this Irish literary renaissance.

This edition includes John’s original manuscript of The Years Flew By, complete with a foreword by Gifford Lewis (who knew her and was the original publisher of that book), a biographical article on John and her five sisters, by Alan Hayes, and selections from the journalism of John Brennan .