We are all well used to our President popping up at social events, lending her support to charity galas, concerts and openings. However, it's a new one on me when the first citizen is presiding over her own book launch. On Monday, the Presi- dent, Mrs McAleese, did just that when she joined some 200 wellwishers in the Dublin Writers' Museum to celebrate her book, Reconciled Being.
The book is developed from a speech Mrs McAleese gave at the 1997 John Main Seminar which was held in St Patrick's College, Maynooth by the World Community for Christian Meditation. She joked on Monday that she had been "talked into" writing it before her campaign began and indeed the book is long overdue - it was embargoed until after the election was over.
It was a moving occasion and one at which the President was surrounded by close friends. Brian Keenan, who has known the author for a long time, spoke and, though he was obviously a little nervous, he grinned as he described himself as "a Belfast Prod". Dom Laurence Freeman, the chair of the World Community for Christian Meditation, also spoke and revealed that he had stayed with the McAleese family several times while the book was being written.
Unusually for a book party, representatives from the religious community figured largely at the gathering, although a bishops' meeting at Maynooth meant many of the prelates had to make their excuses. The DPP Eamonn Barnes was also spotted in the middle of it all - meditating on the the year ahead perhaps?