NOBODY hears the tiny whirr of the camera in the hands of the man in the trenchcoat standing mysteriously by the doorway. He moves stealthily towards the centre of the large room, zooming in on a number of individuals. Disappearing briefly to remove his coat, nobody notices what is going on.
His cover is perfect. He moves about the room, silent, intent on his work. His mission: to record everything that unfolds in the Atrium Room at the National Gallery this evening.
Sam, father of author and journalist Fintan O'Toole, can't be stopped. He wields his compact digital camera and expects the footage to be viewed by relatives in the 21st century. "It's for the children," he explains, nodding towards his two grandsons, Sam (13) and Fionn (9), Fintan's two children.
The O'Toole clan is celebrating the launch of The Irish Times Book of the Century. Fintan's brothers and sisters, Kieran, Patrick, Valerie and Mary are here along with their parents. His wife, Clare Connell, a teacher of English and geography, is smiling proudly also.
Mary O'Toole, dressed in pale lilac for the occasion, doesn't think her son would have been classed as a swot at school. "Not really, Fintan was always at the last minute, I think," she says.
Conor Brady, editor of The Irish Times, compares the author because of "his prodigious output" to An Goban Saor, the Irish folk hero "who could do wonderful jobs and do them in a day" while those around him took forever.
Michael Gill, of publishers Gill & Macmillan, says O'Toole is the most organised individual he has ever met. As for the book, the most arresting image is the black and white photograph of Queen Victoria, he says, "as Queen of Ireland - you realise how much the place has changed in 99 years." As a child, his grandmother played the violin for the queen at a royal visit to her school. Michael's wife, Anne, and daughter Fionnuala, a classical singer, are there too.
The book makes clear, it seems, that you could have been reading the paper assiduously and still miss some of the century's main events. Conor Brady read from an editorial written three days into the Easter Rising which addressed the pressing question of how a man was to occupy his time at home as he could not go out, and suggested digging the garden, engaging in polite conversation with the family, or better still, reacquainting oneself with the works of Shakespeare "on the occasion of his tercentenary".