I feel safe in the assumption that Charles Haughey will not be present when his life and times are discussed and analysed at a forthcoming conference in NUI Cork.
Journalists, including Fintan O'Toole of The Irish Times, Stephen Collins, political correspondent of the Sunday Tribune, and its editor, Matt Cooper, will be present on Friday and Saturday, December 3rd and 4th, at the college when the theme of "Government, Politics and Society in the Haughey Years" will be open for debate.
Prof Enda McDonagh, chairman of NUI Cork's governing body, the former ombudsman, Michael Mills - one of the great political correspondents of those years - and Stephen King, adviser to the Ulster Unionist Party, will also be contributing.
In The Lie of the Land - Journeys through Literary Cork, Mary Leland, a distinguished journalist and author, has put painstaking research into a work that will prove of lasting value to anyone who needs to know more about the rich literary heritage of Cork city and county.
The reader can follow the author's researches in a placeby-place manner. East Cork, west Cork, south-west Cork, north Cork and Cork itself are included. Spenser, Corkery, O'Faolain, O Riordain, Somerville and Ross, Durkin, Taylor, Eilis Dillon, Montague, and Seamus Murphy are included in this literary ramble.