RARELY can a book have had as fitting a launch as R.F. Foster's biography of W.B. Yeats last Wednesday. Not only did it take place in the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery, which Yeats fought to establish, but it was given a warm and generous seal of approval by Michael Yeats, son of the poet, surrounded by paintings by John B. Yeats and portraits of WBY and Maud Gonne by Sarah Purser. In a wonderfully moving speech, Michael Yeats pronounced it a fine book, and one thoroughly approved of by the family. But he admitted that neither he nor his sister Anne had been willing to read the book in proof form: "I wanted the freedom to dislike it - not to censor it," he said with welcome candour.
He recalled various chapters in the long and tortuous saga leading up to the biography - two previous scholars had, for a variety of reasons, not completed their projects - and said his only regret was that we have to wait another four years before the second volume is published.
Everyone there had a sense that this was a very special occasion, a brief moment of history, with Michael Yeats looking uncannily like his father and Francis Stuart, Maud Gonne's son in law, slowly making his way through the ante rooms of the gallery with his third wife, Finola Graham.
Irish literature old and new was represented by what seemed like a roomful of writers, from Francis Stuart and Benedict Kiely to Clare Boylan, Gerald Dawe, Anne Enright, Colm Toibin and Scottish author and Guardian journalist, Andrew O'Hagan, who is working on a new book in Schull, Co Cork. Playwright Sebastian Barry, recently awarded the Ewart Biggs prize, admitted to being chuffed by the response given to The Steward Of Christendom during its New York run, although he and his wife Alison Deegan are preoccupied these days by the imminent arrival of their next baby.
The director of December Bride and Nothing Personal, Thaddeus O'Sullivan, is a longtime friend of Roy and Aisling Foster, and he flew over from London especially for the day. He has two projects on the boil at the moment, both in the US, one of them involving Robert De Niro. The reception brought back fond memories for Sinead McCoole, whose biography of Lady Lavery was launched at the Hugh Lane last year. The US film company DLT, which made Jennie Churchill, has snapped up the rights to her bestselling book from Antuny Farrell's Lilliput Press. Film begins here, in Britain and in the US shortly.
The Fosters, along with Michael and Anne Yeats, editors from Oxford University Press and a clutch of friends, went on to supper at Knockmaroon House in Castleknock, home of Kieran and Vivienne Guinness. Passing through Phoenix Park on the way, the HaleBopp comet was visible, leading Anne to say, in very Yeatsian fashion, that Foster's book had clearly been given a celestial blessing.
The biographer headed for Belfast the following morning to deliver a lecture on Yeats at the Ulster Museum. Last night, there was another mighty party at the Irish Embassy in London, where guests included Lord and Lady Gowrie; Josephine Harte and Maurice Saatchi; novelists Faye Weldon, Julia O'Faolain, Michael Ignatieff and Shane Connaughton; Ruth Dudley Edwards, A.S. Byatt, Polly Devlin, biographers Michael Holroyd and Victoria Glendinning. There was a preponderance of poets: Tom Paulin, Ruth Padell and Bernard O'Donoghue, and the pianist Alfred Brendel was there too. All were treated to Fiona Shaw's rendition of Yeats's Adam's Curse, introduced by the Irish ambassador, Ted Barrington.