It is the season for book launches. Almost 600 people, including former minister for health, Michael Noonan and Bishop Edward Darling, squeezed into Jury's Hotel in Limerick last Monday for the launch of The Limerick Compendium. Its instigator and editor, Labour deputy Jim Kemmy, was sadly missed. He died in September as the book, with sections on travel, history, religion, sport, the labour movement, the theatre, poetry, verse as well as fiction from writers such as Kate O'Brien and Laurence Sterne, was about to go to press. All have a Limerick theme or root, and the latest literary genius from the city, Frank McCourt, was guest of honour.
Although he had known Kemmy for only a year, McCourt said he was the man he would have liked to have been if he had stayed in Limerick. Such was his ultimate Christianity he could walk hand-in-hand through the city with St Francis of Assisi. Yet Limerick was a city of contradictions; outside Russia, it was only one to have had a soviet.