`I set out to write an objective third-hand account of all the things I had observed over 15 years in active politics. After a few failed attempts, I realised I couldn't do it . . . It gradually got personal," says Fergus Finlay, Labour's former guru and Dick Spring confidante, of his book Snakes and Ladders. It came out this week, but without a formal launch because his publishers, New Island Books, didn't want one, he told Quidnunc.
The 15 years were among the most eventful and turbulent in our political history, he writes in his introduction. "And I suppose I wanted to set the record straight too. I left politics convinced that Labour had been treated unfairly, that our role in the implementation of change had been undervalued. That feeling has diminished over time - and my own feeling that politics, by and large, gets the media it deserves, has reasserted itself."
Many of the changes, for the better, that have made Ireland unrecognisable from what it was in 1983 would not have happened without an effective and committed Labour Party in opposition and in government. But he found while writing that characters matter more to him than events, because they shape events and the reaction to events.
It's his third book, following A Cruel Trade, a novel, and President with a Purpose, on Mary Robinson. Another novel is underway - a thriller set in the world of Dublin politics - "the only one I know" - which starts with an attempt to assassinate the Pope in Dublin.
Meanwhile, he has relented on his vow of 11 months ago "never to buy The Irish Times again as long as I live" because of our coverage of Adi Roche in the presidential campaign. While it might not cause champagne corks to pop in the editor's office, the feud is over, he declares. Yippee!