It is a small school reunion, as well as a book launch. The boys of Belgrove School in Clontarf on Dublin's northside head up a small group of celebrated writers.
Tonight the young and the old, the master and pupil, are in Waterstone's on Dawson Street to mark the publication of Prof Declan Kiberd's Irish Classics. The learned talk and the literary evening is . . . vivace.
Neil Belton, of Granta Books and author of The Good Listener, was a pupil at the same time as Kiberd. And the writer John McGahern, who was a teacher in the school at the time, comes with his wife, Madeline, to speak about the great book. Representing the current student population is Rory Kiberd (10), Kiberd's son, who attends Belgrove Senior Boys School.
More and more arrive until the room is bursting at the seams. "It's amazing, you can't move," says Helen Gallagher, administrator of the Anglo-Irish Literature Department at UCD. "It's a great tribute to Declan," she says. Among those queuing for the author's autograph is Pat McKevitt, of The Ireland Institute, who is one of the writer's greatest fans.
In his survey of enduring Irish classics, Kiberd, who is professor of Anglo-Irish Literature at UCD, says he aims "to look at the two-dimensional view of our culture. I wanted to tell the story of both together". According to Belton, "the beauty of Declan's writing is that it's very serious, scholarly work which can be read by the general public. He is one of the few literary academics who is capable of that."