The FG leader in the Seanad, Maurice Manning, is a wellknown academic with UCD's politics department, and his fifth book of modern Irish history, on James Dillon, will be published next year. Meanwhile, however, he has written a political novel. Betrayal tells the story of a taoiseach who is haunted by a business secret from his past and is undermined by some of his ministers.
The narrator is a government press secretary who becomes involved with the taoiseach's wife in a way that government press secretaries are not wont to do.
Two of the most celebrated holders of the government press secretary job, P.J. Mara and Sean Duignan, were to jointly launch the book. Everything was going smoothly until two blips occurred. The launch, planned for Tuesday, had to be put back a day because of the presidential inauguration; and then it was noticed that the name of the fictional taoiseach corresponded to that of a major Irish financial figure. In these politically correct days the PR people thought it hugely insensitive to proceed as planned. The taoiseach in Manning's novel is now called Jack Mulcahy.