PHOTOGRAPHERS hogging the back doors, fans waiting anxiously on the footpath - they were scenes more appropriate to a celebrity hotel than a sedate bookshop. However, as the reading was by the stunning actor Ralph Fiennes, along with his sister Sophie and brother Joseph, Wednesday night's behaviour outside Waterstones was perhaps understandable. (But we mustn't get in the habit of fawning, fans, or the celebrities won't come here anymore.)
The Fienneses (Sophie is a film producer currently working on a project about Dublin's Northside pony kids entitled Hooligans, while actor Joseph has just finished in the RSC's Troilus and Cressida) strolled down to Waterstones from the Shelbourne to meet the 350-strong crowd that packed the top floor. After an introduction by Telegraph journalist Mick Brown, the three settled into readings from their mother's book, Jennifer Lash's Blood Ties, and followed it up with a question-and-answer session.
The ticket-holding audience consisted mainly of 18 to 23-year-old young women, but among them were several people who had known Jennifer Lash when she lived outside Bantry, Co Cork - one of whom stood up to say that her three children had done her proud. After a two-hour session and a few impromptu autographs, the Fiennes clan headed to the Clarence for dinner.