There was a round of parties this week to launch Ruth Dudley Edwards's book, The Faithful Tribe: An Intimate Portrait of the Loyal Institutions (See Weekend 9). David Trimble did the honours at Politico's Bookshop, within earshot of the Westminster division bells, on Monday, UCD president Art Cosgrove launched it in Dublin's Newman House on Wednesday and Maurice Leitch did the necessaries at the Stormont Hotel in Belfast on Thursday.
Orangemen, the book's subject, were thin on the ground in Dublin, but those who did travel included the Rev William Bingham, the Rev Brian Kenaway and Denis Wilson. Bingham, who defused things at Drumcree last year, said the two sides were now further apart than they had been since 1996. He was proud to be an Orangeman, but not proud of all Orangemen. Dudley Edwards, he said, was a most unusual person to have an interest in the Orange Institutions and they were a bit suspicious of her at first.
Two ambassadors attended - Mike Sullivan of the US and Britain's Ivor Roberts, as well as Senator Maurice Manning, John McMenamin SC, chairman of the Bar Council, SCs Michael McDowell and Adrian Hardiman and UUP adviser Steven King.
In London, the attendance included unionist MPs Martin Smyth and Jeffrey Donaldson, assembly member William Thompson, Tory MP Andrew Hunter, well-known friend of the union Lord Cranborne, the Irish Ambassador, Ted Barorington and Dame Veronica Sutherland. As he spoke, David Trimble's phone kept ringing, and while Dudley Edwards was asking her guests to raise a glass to the survival of former IRA man Sean O'Callaghan, he withdrew to the balcony to take the call. It was Tony Blair.
And throughout it all there was a demo outside by the Friends of the Garvaghy Road.