Ireland, Francesco Cossiga writes, is "a tough wild land, whose colours are bitter yet very sweet, the green of the fields, the grey of the rain, the sudden bold blue of a sky that occasionally offers a warm and different sun. It is a land where everything changes and where everything stays the same, where the light is as changeable as the weather, a bizarre and ancient land, certainly the one that most resembles my nature, even my dualistic inner struggle between its dark and bright sides".

It is also the land of "that freedom that - since my earliest youth - I was brought up and educated to, through the world of Christian values during the Fascist period; but it is also the land of my dreams which, for its joy and its suffering, its will to live and die, is the place most congenial to my spirit and nature, to the reasons of my heart and to the reasons of my intellect".

Cossiga's links with Ireland go back to a childhood in which an anti-Fascist priest and a strict father were key figures. "Better the priests than the Fascists!" was his father's slogan, and the Catholic association Cossiga joined as a boy brought him in contact with the concept of Daniel O'Connell as the founder of the first liberal Catholic political party in Europe.

It was, Cossiga writes, "an irresistible attraction that led me far deeper into the island of dreams, even though I came to know it only as a grown man, when I was Minister of the Interior, I think, when a meeting was held in the austere yet pleasant, convivial and `fantastic' city of Dublin. Since then, it can be said, I have never managed to tear myself away from Ireland.

"Not entirely, at any rate. I felt an immediate affinity, but the most genuine bond was forged by degrees and was also influenced by intellectual and political considerations: starting with the great struggles for independence and liberty conducted above all through the means of protest and politics, but also by parliamentary means, because, and this is a historical curiosity, the Irish were the first to invent filibustering, a technique they brought to bear in Westminster in opposition to the overweening power of the British majority and the lack of respect for their own fundamental rights."

After that initial visit he immediately felt the need to return. "I took my son Piri with me. For me Ireland had become the land of unfulfilled desires and I felt that, if I could live in a different place and imagine an emotional life that was even richer and more complex, a place of the emotions and maybe even of a great youthful love, then no other place could have measured up to Ireland.

"Ireland is not a fantasy, it is the land of dreams because there is rain and sunshine, there is barren land and verdant land, there is a simple joie de vivre that walks hand in hand with a defiant contempt for death. It is an island not only geographically, but also because it has no need of other reference points in order to be itself; a free country, of course, as it is a Christian county, a raw and powerful Christianity in a magical land that is itself an ancient Celtic fable. . .

"When I took my daughter Annamaria there, she noticed with a certain sense of wonder that the men she maintained were the greats of English literature were all Irish: Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, Samuel Beckett, Jonathan Swift, William Butler Yeats and so on, all Irish. The overweening power of the English `gave' the Irish another language, and the Irish gave the English works of the intellect and the heart, invaluable prose and poetry. This magnificent land of contradictions in which one can be sad and then become cheerful; in which one can love life most dearly yet not fear death, indeed all but defy it. It is at once the land of profound experience of life and the land of the things you hope are to come.

"Perhaps these things will come to pass, perhaps not. But I am searching for them, struggling to have them, and at the same time I can wait and not give in. And I can believe. This is what life is all about, nothing else."

And what could the former Italian president be if he were not a proud Sardinian?

"I could be Irish, because there is a link with insularity, a thing that we Sardinians have the habit of denying or hiding or diluting with a desire to be a part of the continent, a part of Italy, Europe and the world. The Irish have invaded the US, Canada, Australia and they all feel Irish. . . But they never deny their insularity, which does not mean withdrawing into themselves. This is another reason why I realised that the Sardinians were getting it all wrong. We were wrong to think that we could live a life that went beyond the island by denying the island, without understanding that its borders represent a resource, an asset springing from our insularity and our identity."

Noted in Italy as a politician who eschewed the romantic and the sentimental in favour of a strict rationality, Cossiga writes that he is a different person in Ireland. He once even attempted to write a novella in which a young Irish woman became to him what Beatrice was to Dante. When in Ireland, he writes, the struggle between the dark side of his nature, l'omino nero (the little black man), and the bright side, l'omino bianco (the little white man) takes on a different shape.

"At bottom, I am more or less the same person whether I am in Rome, in London or in Oxford. Dublin is another matter. That's why my daughter is always saying that I am another person in Ireland. She says `another person' but in reality I am that `other person'! And the problem is this: am I l'omino nero or l'omino bianco? I think that in Ireland the two aspects would intermingle better, while in England l'omino nero would reign alone."

Francesco Cossiga's book, La Passione e La Politica, was published by Rizzoli on Monday