Well, those who get themselves worked up about the presence of Martin McGuinness around the Royal Family would not have enjoyed last night’s musical extravaganza, Ceiliuradh, for the Irish president at the Albert Hall. They’d have been on their own, mind you. Everyone else had a ball; it was a packed house for Elvis Costello plus Fiona Shaw and Dermot O’Leary, but the knockout element was the combined band of the Irish Guards and the Irish Defence Force doing the Minstrel Boy, which made me cry. That was a nice touch: Tom Moore, its author, was lionised in London as much as in Ireland. And there in the Royal Box, alongside the president were Prince and Princess Michael of Kent — it was, I have to say, the first time I’ve heard a packed house raise a modest cheer for Princess Michael; she beamed.
But there, tucked away behind them, so far as I could make out, gawking from below, was Martin McGuinness who seemed to be chatting quite comfortably with Peter Robinson.
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