THE SOCIAL NETWORK:Guests at the British ambassador's garden party on Thursday evening filed past the clothes Queen Elizabeth wore on during her state visit to Ireland last year. The dresses and hats were on mannequins. The ambassador, Dominick Chilcott, said that he was very grateful to the queen for lending them for the occasion.
In his speech the ambassador singled out Danny Boyle, the director of the Olympic opening ceremony, as someone who encapsulates “the straddling of the Irish sea in a spirit of kinship”. Boyle was born in Lancashire, but his mother came from Galway, and all four of his grandparents were Irish.
The ambassador proposed that survivors – a lot of wine and Guinness was on offer – should gather at the Guinness Jazz Band at 10pm and sing Danny Boy as a tribute to Boyle and to what he represents in British-Irish relations. When the allotted time came, everyone sang in unison.
Minister of State for European Affairs Lucinda Creighton enjoyed the party and caught up with her former campaign manager Tom Ponsonby. Ponsonby’s friend Rebecca Wardell works for the British embassy. She caught up with her friends the accountant Luke McCarrick and Nicola Woods of Ulster Bank.
The Fine Gael strategist Frank Flannery and his wife, Marguerite MacCurtain, were talking to Olivia Mitchell. Mary Mitchell O’Connor sat down for some respite at one stage; it may have been her vertiginous heels.
Mr Justice Paul Carney surveyed the gardens, and Fianna Fáil’s Éamon Ó Cuív left early.
Canon Bob Reed, the precentor of St Patrick’s Cathedral, was the epitome of sartorial elegance in his panama hat. He chatted to the nuncio, Archbishop Charles Brown, whose driver was on holiday, leaving the nuncio to have to “flag down a cab”.
What we ate:samples from Isabel's on Baggot Street and O'Connell's of Donnybrook.
Who we spotted:the chief of staff of the Defence Forces, Lt Gen Sean McCann; former taoiseach Liam Cosgrave; the chief executive of the Olympic Council of Ireland, Stephen Martin; the president of the RDS, Phonsie Mealy; the publisher Norah Casey; Alexander Fitzgerald of Irish Tatler Man and his mother, Ethna Fitzgerald of Rotary International in Ireland; Mercury Engineering's Eamonn O'Kane; PwC's Feargal O'Rourke, son of Mary O'Rourke; Ross Golden Bannon of Food Wine Magazine; the chairman of the National Concert Hall, Kieran Tobin.
