Fine Gael's Maurice Manning can turn his hand to many things - senator, lecturer in politics in UCD, academic, biographer and novelist - but he has not yet taken up poetry. So the Prof Maurice Manning who features on the Internet as one of the most distinguished poets in the USA and winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets prize is not our man.
Senator Manning says the first he heard of the poet Manning was when he beat 700 Americans for the prize. The third Maurice Manning on the Internet is professor of biochemistry at the University of Toledo, Ohio, and this is the senator's first cousin.
Senator Manning's latest book was James Dillon, a Biography which came out last Christmas. For this Christmas he hopes to have his new novel in the shops. "It deals with the death of a bishop who has left too much money. There is murder and mayhem."
Quidnunc is at rholohan@irish-times.ie
Quidnunc returns in September