In years gone by Dermot Keogh was a lively colleague on the subs' desk of the Irish Press, though his journalistic career was over by the time I called on him at the University of Fiesole in 1977, where he was studying historical matters entirely unrelated to the interests of the de Valera family.
Since then, of course, he has become one of our most eminent historians, but I like to think that his journalistic background has left its mark - his writing has a clarity and accessibility you don't always associate with academicism.
You'll encounter these virtues, and his gracefully-worn scholarship, too, in his fascinating new book, Jews in Twentieth-Century Ireland (Cork University Press), which was launched by President McAleese in the magnificent Long Room of Trinity College's Old Library on Tuesday evening.
The book is subtitled "Refugees, Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust", and President McAleese found in it striking parallels with our attitude to those asylum-seekers who are arriving in the Ireland of today in search of refuge, hope and opportunity. Bearing this in mind, she said, "Dermot's book should be compulsory reading for every single one of us."
The author himself noted that while the Jewish community in Ireland numbered 6,000 in 1946, it has now dwindled to 1,500, though he pointed out that its impact on Irish life has always greatly exceeded its size.
A considerable proportion of that community were in the Long Room to pay tribute to Dermot's achievement.
Looking every inch the Poet Laureate he now is, John Montague was in fine spirits when I congratulated him on his appointment.
The exact title is Ireland Professor of Poetry, but in effect this brainchild of Ireland's two Arts Councils makes him our laureate, and it would be difficult to think of anyone who - in quality, consistency and duration of achievement - merits the honour more. A three-year appointment, it means that he'll spend the first year at TCD, the second at Queen's and the third at UCD, and while the Arts Councils weren't exactly endangering their coffers with the £20,000 annual salary they decided on, he's only required to spend an academic term at each institution.
The adjudicating panel, which included Seamus Heaney, chose wisely and well.
The title of John Pilger's new book is Hidden Agendas, but there's never been anything hidden about this crusading journalist's agenda: the exposure of repression, corruption and evil wherever he finds it throughout the globe.
There's no denying the man's courage or the passionate zeal he brings to his investigations, and if it encourages in him a tendency towards sermonising solemnity, well, that probably goes with the territory and is a small price to pay for his harassment of venal authorities.
I mention him here because, to coincide with the book's publication, he'll be speaking in Eason of O'Connell Street next Tuesday at 7.30pm.
Meanwhile, if you're already seen or are just about to see John Boorman's The General (and you should), Sunday World journalist Paul Williams will be signing copies of the absorbing book on which it's based in Virgin Megastore of Aston Quay at 3pm today. In fact, the first twenty people to buy the book during the signing will get a free pair of tickets to see the movie at Parnell Street's Virgin cinema.
I recall that in the summer of 1971 the situation in Northern Ireland was as tense and volatile as it's ever been, before or since, but I hadn't realised that when Brian Faulkner introduced internment in August of that year, it amounted to a full-scale pogrom.
This, however, is what someone called Ruth Scurr declares when reviewing Patrick McCabe's new novel, Breakfast on Pluto, in the Times Literary Supplement. While the characters are "milling around Dublin market" (wherever that might be), up north there has been "the unilateral introduction of internment for Catholics". What, all of them? Only in Ian Paisley's dreams, methinks.
Hayden Murphy, that familiar figure on the Dublin literary scene in the Seventies, writes from Edinburgh (where he now lives) to say that he's guest editor of an Irish edition of that city's literary magazine, Chapman.
He has already contacted a number of Irish poets and publishers in connection with his task, but he'd welcome a response from any newer imprints (he mentions Lagan Press in particular) with regard to the review section he's planning. And he'd also like comments from those in the know about the Irish-Scottish exchange visits that ran from 1971 to 1995.
You can contact Hayden at 17 Royal Circus, Edinburgh, Scotland, EH3 6TL (telephone: 0131-226 3894).
New Words department. The dust jacket blurb for Fay Weldon's new book, A Hard Time to Be a Father (Flamingo), informs us that "her novels and short stories best-sell around the world".