Finally tracked this down:

"You will find us only on the very best atlases, because we are the smallest country left in Europe… a self-respecting country which deserves and sometimes achieves a colour of its own on the map - usually a dyspeptic mint green, which misses the outline of the frontier by a fraction of an inch, so that one can almost hear the printer saying damn." - the General, in Peter Ustinov's play Romanoff and Juliet.

slovobooks and ephiriel's wedding on Friday was great fun. The first registry office wedding we've been to in Ireland, though we've done them in England and Germany, and this was by far the nicest of the three. No actual readings - the ceremony was very short - but very heartening affirmations of the couple's love and devotion for each other. As with all these occasions, it reminded us very strongly and happily of our own wedding in 1993. We had time after the registry office bit to go to Hodges Figgis and spend €€€ on books, and then headed in to the Ashling Hotel for the reception. We were at the same table as jacobsmills and natural20, and there may well have been other lj'ers around who I didn't identify. Also very glad to see Gerry Doyle again, and good chats with Eimear Ni Mhealoid. The speeches were also great - funny and the right sort of length. I shall be on the lookout for a good context to use davidstewart's closing toast, "Live Long and Prosper!"

Unfortunately I'd been kicked out of bed by our small people, delightful though they are, before six a.m., and then spent the next few hours of the morning worrying intensely about the brewing trouble in South Ossetia and other matters, so simply wasn't in shape to stick around for the dancing and later celebrations, which was a real shame as it looked like it was going to be excellent. slovobooks and ephiriel both looked radiantly happy, though slovobooks has, startlingly, grown his hair to almost a whole centimetre in length and ephiriel is a bit thinner after her recent health travails though she otherwise looks in pretty good form. (Bumped into omegar on the way out, though I don't think he recognised me.) We went back to my mother's house and were asleep not long after nine.

8) Hard to Swallow: The Abandoned Comedy Routines of John Dowie, Illustrated by Hunt Emerson

Picked this up trying to cure insomnia caused by overindulgence at slovobooks and ephiriel's wedding. Why are comedy routines never as funny when you read them written down compared to when you see them on stage? (Perhaps because you are usually sober, and not surrounded by other people laughing, when reading them off the page.) Emerson's cartoons are fun as usual though I suspect nothing like Dowie's stage act. The one illustrating the script about haemorrhoids will stay with me for a long time.

9) The Political Animal: An Anatomy, by Jeremy Paxman.

I met Jeremy Paxman, one of Britain's leading political journalists, twice in 1994, in my capacity as the captain of the Queen's University of Belfast's team in University Challenge (the British TV show where teams from different universities take each other on in a general knowledge quiz). He was as acerbic and funny is person as he is on the screen. I remember him growling at me to hurry up and answer a particular question, "Come on, some of us have got homes to go to!" He revealed to us that his least favourite person in the then failing Major government was health secretary Virginia Bottomley. "She never says anything when I interview her." She was probably as frightened of him as we were. He says in the first chapter,

I have met literally hundreds of politicians. Some I have come to like, others to respect, and one or two I have learned must be handled as if they are radioactive. I know that the last feeling is reciprocated by some, but there is - or ought to be - a natural tension between reporters and politicians, and I am not close to any of them. It is easier that way.

This book is no mere pot-boiler. I get the sense that Paxman is genuinely puzzled by what makes politicians tick; why they subject themselves to humiliation by constituency selection committees, fellow MPs, party leaders, and Paxman and his own colleagues in the press, and why, as Enoch Powell (once our neighbour here in Loughbrickland) observed, all political careers end in failure. He doesn't come up with a systematic reply but does have a lot of amusing anecdotes and one or two good observations - 24 out of the UK's 51 prime ministers lost their fathers before the age of 21, for instance. He talks to one of the two people in England with a personal subscription to Hansard, the official record of parliamentary debates, and asks him, why? And gets the charming answer, "I'm very old, you know. I'm over ninety. And I think I'm pretty mad."

To those who know me it's no big secret that I am attracted to the idea of being a politician. I've stood for election twice, in 1990 and 1996, though did pretty dismally both times. One striking thing is that the very academically gifted tend not to do very well in politics. Only one American president, and as far as I know no British prime minister, has gained a PhD. Paxman points out that the three prime ministers of the twentieth century with the best academic qualifications by far were Asquith, Eden and Wilson, none of them howling successes. He has obviously benefited from a long chat with my former mentor John Alderdice, who I always felt was far too intelligent to be at the heart of politics (the fact that he was party leader for almost 11 years, having taken on the job at the age of 33, shows the weakness of the party as much as the strength of his own talent). A political consultant, quoted by Paxman, is told that political parties ought to try and attract "low-fliers" (as Anne points out, not quite the same thing as the academically ungifted).

Paxman spends a lot of time lambasting the primitive set-up of the British political system, especially the entire architecture and procedure of the Westminster parliament. But the only modest reform he supports is to allow ministers who are MPs to be allowed to speak in relevant debates in the House of Lords, and vice versa. Quite apart from the questions one should ask about the composition of the House of Lords, this misses one of the biggest blind spots in the British constitutional tradition - the requirement that ministers must be members of one or other house, carried through slavishly to the Oireachtas and the unicameral chambers in Stormont, Edinburgh and Cardiff. Surely if most of Europe and the U.S. can manage by separating the legislative and executive, the UK and Ireland could consider this too? I need to work up a proper rant about this for publication somewhere

It ends up a bit scrappy but there are a lot of things to like about this book. Paxman retains a certain affection for, and understanding of, Northern Ireland, which he mentions several times (indeed I think he give us proportionally more attention than Wales of Scotland). The bibliography cites a huge number of political memoirs - I estimate roughly a hundred autobiographies and about the same number of biographical studies - but almost all British, with a very few Americans and no continentals (or even Irish). Paxman is gracious enough to acknowledge assistance in this part of the writing by Alex von Tunzelmann, former editor of the Oxford student newspaper Cherwell. I shall look out for her work in future.

10) The Demolished Man, by Alfred Bester

I think I mistakenly noted that I had already read this on that sf/f books survey the other day. I really did read it last night and this morning, and it really is excellent, to the point that it's almost impossible to describe without sounding clichéd (… pyrotechnic prose … crazed imagination … far future but recognizable New York … crime novel meets sf …). Not that it is completely without flaws - we are told that there hasn't been a successful premeditated murder in 79 years, but by the end of the book not one but three people have been killed, and the prevalence of murder weapons and nasty people makes it sem improbable that the murder rate is so very low. The psychic motivations and action of the villainous Ben Reich are vividly narrated but don't really bear deep scrutiny. The gender relations seem a weird combination of 1950's morality with occasional lapses into Suetonius. But it really is a great book all the same, driving you on to finish it. Won the first ever Hugo award, in 1953, the year of birth of Dave Langford and Walter Jon Williams.