Even academics have to come down from those ivory towers occasionally and some of them chose to do so for the party to celebrate The Oxford Companion To Irish History in Trinity College, Dublin on Wednesday. Thomas Web- ster, publishing director at Oxford University Press, introduced Prof Joe Lee, who was there to "do the honours" and Prof Sean Connolly, who edited the tome.
Lee kicked off his entertaining speech with an introduction as Gaeilge "so everybody knows the ideological basis for my cultural identity, at the moment at least". Sean Connolly had the daunting task of following that energetic speech but he kept it topical by telling of how St Patrick almost got left out of the book entirely as "the ultimate act of revisionist history".
The gathering came mostly from the halls of academe and included David Dickson and Aileen Douglas from Trinity College; Euanan O'Halpin of DCU; Mary Daly and John Coakley of UCD, and contributors Kenneth Milne and the Rev Adrian Empey. Brendan O Buachalla was there too; he was off to the Aras the next day to collect a prize from Bord Na Gaeilge for his Irish language scholarship from the President, Mrs McAleese.
Mairead Dunlevy of the National Museum of Ireland chatted to David Craig of the National Archive while the book trade was represented by Rita Hughes of Hughes and Hughes; Fred Hanna of, yes, Fred Hanna's and Cormac Kinsella of Waterstones.