I can still remember the pure terror. I was 18 and about to give my maiden speech to the UCD Literary and Historical Society. In one of the dozens of affectionate (Vincent Brownes bilious offering is the exception) and often hilarious (top bouquet to Harry Crawleys priceless account of the early Sixties) essays in a celebration of L&Hs last 50 years, Patricia Hourican described its Earlsfort Terrace venue: "The very size of the old physics theatre with its tiered stalls, tightly pressed, created an atmosphere of vaudeville; it was theatre, but more-it was the colosseum. If they couldn't applaud, the people wanted blood!"

The L&H was in my genes. During my childhood, my father, an ex-auditor-and from 1947 a vice-president-was a frequent guest and would disappear afterwards with the raffish elements to basement bed-sits or distant sheebeens. I remember him one Sunday morning arriving home accompanied by his cousin Brian Lenihan, another friend to the L&H, both having been out on the tiles until breakfast time.

I had been only 14 when my brother Owen became auditor, and with Godfrey Agbim sensationally defeated the best of Ireland and the United Kingdom to win the Observer Mace debating competition.

On Saturday nights I was sometimes allowed to lurk at the back, marvelling at such performers as Maeve Binchy (I still remember her rendition of The Purple People-Eater) and Ricky Johnson, now His Honour the grave Mr Justice Richard Johnson of the Special Criminal Court, who could get the audience to sing nonsense in three-part harmony.

By the time I was 16, a school drop-out theoretically cramming for the Matriculation (the alternative entry route to the NUI in those happy pre-points days), I was a regular groupie, and even before I became an undergraduate, I acquired the status of being the girlfriend of the hugely controversial Patrick Cosgrave (later auditor and-with the brilliant and funny Anthony Clare-winner of the Observer Mace).

In a conformist age (Catholics banned from attending Trinity, no meat in the canteen on Fridays), the irreverent, effervescent, anticlerical L&H was viewed by Authority with deep suspicion. With Ireland in a dull phase, young reporters were dispatched to us on a Saturday night to find a story, and the Sunday Independent caused us much trouble by reporting in my time for example that we had passed a pro-communist motion (not really) and had insulted Lenihan, then Minister for Justice, by booing him lustily because he kept his hands in his pockets while speaking (he'd laughed). At one stage, we were banned and held an election in a car in Earlsfort Terrace.

An occasional pursuit was censuring the dodgy machine politicians of the Students Representative Council (SRC), though the limited effect of our disapproval was explained by Gerry Collins (later Minister for Foreign Affairs, God help us), then an elderly student retaking his exams as he learned his political trade: "Ye have the intellectuals," he reminded an L&H critic, "but we have the masses-and there's more of us."

I was frantic to be on the committee, and, though a doughty political operator, I couldn't get there without making at least one speech. Having postponed the ordeal until the last minute, I had to address the winds of change in Africa. What I said had been written by Patrick, and during my panicky rehearsals I had kept referring not to "Nkrumahs Ghana" but to "Nkramahs Guma". While I got it right on the night, the sentiments of the speech, which-having then little interest in politics I didn't understand at all-inspired Moore McDowell (now UCD Professor of Economics) to heckle vigorously: not having the remotest idea what I or he were talking about, I tried to react with disdain.

But I got on to the committee bench, and for a year, wearing a different evening dress every week (a glamorous predecessor, our own Emer OKelly, had left us high standards to live up to), had a wonderful vantage point from which to survey the packed, baying audience, with prime hecklers like Colm de Barra, Tony Cahill and Henry Kelly waiting to breach any weak spot in a speakers defence.

My favourite heckle is related in my brothers essay, re-calling a visit in the late Sixties as a guest-speaker. The US ambassadors question re Vietnam, "How are we to release ourselves from this terrible imbroglio?", won a helpful reply from the audience: "Send Johnson to Dallas."

It was magic. Pure magic.

To buy The Literary and Historical Society 1955-2005 (ed. Frank Callanan) and/or The Centenary History of the Literary and Historical Society of University College Dublin 1855-1955 (ed.James Meenan; new introduction by Charles Lysaght), both €35, available from the L&H at UCD (auditor@literaryandhistorical.com), or A & A Farmar, phone (01) 496 3625 or email afarmar@iol.ie. The books are also available in major bookshops.

The student wild days of celebrities, professionals and political aids will be unveiled in a new book on sale next week.

Nearly 70 stories and essays reminiscing on the collective college antics of members of University College Dublins Literary and Historical Society, are included in the book, published to celebrate 50 years of the society.

One story lifts the lid on a plot by a then young, long-haired Pat Kenny and his engineering colleagues to kidnap broadcaster Gay Byrne outside RTE in 1967. It was all in the name of charity, but went horribly wrong.

"Certain engineering students attempted to kidnap Gay Byrne on his way to The Late Late Show in order to hold him ransom for a charity they were supporting. Gay Byrne managed to evade capture and the enterprise, and its attendant publicity, looked doomed. Then they decided to capture the auditor of the L&H, and hold him to ransom."

Despite the substituted charity hostage, unfortunately for the young Kenny and his colleagues, nobody paid the ransom.

"It is interesting to note that one of the ringleaders of the kidnap gang was Pat Kenny, engineer and broadcaster. He may not have prevented Gay Byrne from presenting The Late Late Show then but he eventually got his way," adds one passage.

In the book, controversial former Supreme Court Judge Hugh O'Flaherty reveals his carefree days, when Dublin had "little serious crime". It was the golden age for debating in the 1950s, adds the former judge. However, he admits facing a certain amount of heckling then.

"Having once been denounced in a debate as a cross between Judas Iscariot and Titus Gates, who made Pontius Pilate look like a just man, I felt that nothing could be said of me in an afterlife that would equal that castigation," writes the retired judge about his student days.

Judge O'Flaherty resigned as a Supreme Court judge in 1999, following uproar over the early release from prison of Dublin architect Philip Sheedy.

Writer Maeve Binchys memory of the UCD club--entitled "the sex of the 50s" tells readers she stuck to her guns, going home after Saturday night debates despite other enticements. "Blessed was not the word I would have used but it shows what a good girl I was that I never missed the 11.23 (train) home. Not once, despite the fleshpots hovering around Leeson Street to tempt me." In conservative Ireland in the 1950s, she was the only woman to debate one whole year, one passage explains, despite throwing up three times while sick the same night. Another figure who throws light on his student days is controversial columnist Kevin Myers.

However, the evening theatre debates were anything but excessive for Mr Myers. UCD was "grim, dire and bleak" and "unhappy hormones filled the physics theatre."

"I spoke once, an impoverished affair on housing, a maiden speech that was treated with the respect that a gang of tomcats might show a she-cat in heat. Mauled, I trickled off the stage, never again to darken its door with any rhetorical flourishes," the columnist writes.

Another well known figure, broadcaster Vincent Browne, also pours scorn on his college days, deciding he was "as much a victim as a perpetrator" during the college debates. The University College Dublin club was the scene of charged debate between taoisigh, judges and media hacks over five decades.

Scores of Irelands best known figures including James Joyce, Garret Fitzgerald and Charles Haughey were UCD students.

The L&H book even alleges Charles Haughey once burned a union flag outside Trinity College Dublin.

The books assistant editor Paul Brady said: "It has taken four years to bring this project to completion but it has been a fascinating experience. It was fantastic to see the level of interest and enthusiasm shown by former members from the past 50 years."

The Literary and Historical Society 1955-2005 is published by A&A Farmar. Copies for €35 can be bought by emailing the L&H at UCD (auditor@literaryandhistorical.com), or afarmar@iol.ie or phoning 01-496 3625.

The Literary and Historical Society (the L&H) was founded in 1855 by John Henry Newman as a forum for debate among the students of his Catholic University, which is now UCD. His aim was that the society would become "the Alma Mater of the rising generation". The L&H, by extension, was to become the cockpit of debating controversy for that rising generation-and so it came to pass. Its first 100 years were chronicled in a centenary history edited by James Meenan. Now Frank Callanan has edited a history of the society from 1955 to 2005. Both volumes are now published as companions and are good reading for those who want to remember, or to discover for the first time, a slice of life in the leading Irish university-the powerhouse of independent Ireland. Maeve Binchy explains the significance of the L&H in her youth. It was on Saturday nights, "the sex of the fifties". Her maiden speech, she confesses, "wasn't great" or "even good". But it was her first time. And it was the first speech from a woman student that year. And she still remembers the blood-red mist in her eyes and the roaring in her ears. The L&H, she "knows", was magic. And when I met Maeve at the launch of the book in Belfield last week, we both relived a little of that magic.

The latest volume has more than 60 monographs, which cover a 50-year period, written in the main by former auditors and committee members. The fun and excitement of it all rushes out of the pages. It is, of course, not a little self-adulatory. But not overly so. Self-deprecation and fondness are there as well.

The L&H is very much a living thing. It doesn't have its own building. It has always had to share its accommodation with the day-to-day lecture halls of the university. It has practically no regalia and its greatest treasures are its minutes books, which would give the casual reader almost no understanding of its proceedings. The L&H lives in the minds and hearts of each generation of members. And that is the value of recording its history-not as continuous narrative but as a succession of very personal vignettes.

In the early years of the 1955-2005 period, conflict with authority, in the larger-than-life form of Michael Tierney, gave an edge to many of the societys activities. His claimed right to approve outside speakers must have been manna from heaven to auditors, who were thereby transformed into heroic champions of the downtrodden student body. In an era of authority and of relative poverty (Michael Lowey records that one pre-meeting pint was all the students could afford), Saturday night at the L&H was a central part of the social existence of many, but by no means all, of the students of the 1950s and 1960s. That they could pit their wits and intellects with great figures of politics, literature and public life (or witness their colleagues attempting to joust with such luminaries) and could socialise in the process without even the smallest admission charge was riches indeed.

Desmond Green, who, more than other auditors, had to deal with Michael Tierney, recounts their turbulent relationship in great detail, but still thought Tierney to be "a very nice man, who carried many wounds". As Tierneys youngest nephew I can vouch for his kindness and warmth. During those turbulent times, I was a long-staying guest during summer holidays at University Lodge, and had the run with my cousins of the entire Belfield campus, then a huge aggregation of large, frequently boarded-up houses and surrounding farms awaiting transformation into the Belfield of today. At the age of 10, to go into Tierneys study after a day spent exploring the broad acres of that estate, and there to be read aloud The Lord of the Rings in front of a log fire, was heaven itself. While joining battle with the students on issues of authority, Tierney had not only discovered Tolkien in the late 1950s but had shared Middle Earth with his nephew and grandchildren. Bliss indeed. Charles Lysaght, as always, writes beautifully and authoritatively of his days in the society.

Kevin Myers, another writer of our times, recounts with less enthusiasm the L&H of the late 1960s. Of his speech there, he says: "I spoke once, an improvised affair on housing, a maiden speech that was treated with the respect that a gang of tomcats might show a she-cat in heat. Mauled, I trickled off the stage, never again to darken its door with any rhetorical flourishes."

Kevin, of whom I am very fond, was not the first nor the last to suffer at the hands of the L&H mob. But his reference to the topic of "housing" as the battleground for his rhetorical nemesis in all probability conceals the real reason for a poor reception on the night: he was given in those days to long ideological orations about social injustice. The tomcats had probably heard it all before! But, meantime, Kevin has learned the hard way how to command his readers attention.

Anthony Clare (auditor, 1963-1964) played a leading role in the society, and in its subsequent commemoration, by convening the ad-hoc group to re-enact James Joyces Drama and Life paper, which Joyce presented to the L&H on January 20th 1900. One hundred years later, I found the re-enactment hugely interesting. Gerry Stembridge scripted the evening. The minutes include a reference to Eoin MacNeill, my grandfather, chairing a meeting a week prior to the delivery of Joyces paper. That Joycean centenary commemoration eventually led indirectly to the publication of the latest history.

Passing to the period of my own involvement in the society, I found a rich mother-lode of happy, well-written memories. I confess readily that I was not the wittiest, the most persuasive or the most entertaining of speakers. I was surrounded by far more talented orators. But I enjoyed every minute of it, especially the "dog eat dog" atmosphere which (with the exception of the maiden speakers) cut everyone down to size. The issue of the move to the Belfield campus was for 20 years on the minds of the L&H debaters. Given that the visionary project was being driven by Michael Tierney, it was predictable that those who viewed him as Dr Tyranny would also tog out against Belfield.

In a small sleepy city; the scale of the Belfield project was easy to discount. And there was a "town and gown" aspect. Belfield seemed far away from the bookshops, the bars, the restaurants and cafes that formed the backdrop to UCD student life. Contrary arguments were raised about the possibility of expanding UCD in the city-centre zone between Leeson Street, Harcourt Street and the canal. But, in truth, if UCD had not gone to Belfield it would have stayed in an institutional cul-de-sac. So, in the end, it fell to Adrian Hardiman to move the L&H to Belfield, and from Saturday to Friday nights. That decision was right, if not without consequence. It took a good deal more deliberation to attend the societys meetings, in terms of geography and commitment, once the move to Belfield was made. Gone were the days that you could leave your options open as to whether to stay all evening at a meeting or slip away quietly to Kirwans or some city-centre dancehall. Changed, too, was the physical context of the L&H. Belfield theatres are raked, steep-sided cockpits compared with the flatter auditoria of the two physics theatres in Newman House and Earlsfort Terrace. Compared with the TCD Hists chamber, the L&H has a far more threatening aspect for the faint-hearted speaker.

Original pioneers in Belfield felt that a day in college resembled a day at the airport-an isolated, unsettling, type of student life. But, as Hugh Brady said when launching the book, graduates should now take the time to walk the campus-and not just at weekends-to see how Michael Tierneys project has developed and is developing.

Not too lugubrious, I hope, to suggest that a book of this kind resembles a visit to a cemetery. The newer graves may be of less interest (except to the recently bereaved, of course) than the sculptures, graves and vaults of earlier times or, for that matter, of ones contemporaries. So the more contemporary chapters might appear less compelling to me than those populated with familiar names and faces. But they show a vibrant, rich vein of similar lore. And the writing styles, though diverse, are really attractive and engaging and vivid. I confess total amazement at the clear recall not merely of events but of sequences of events which many contributors display so many years later. Gerry Danaher, for instance, seems to have almost photographic recall of his time in the L&H.

The begrudgers will knock this book, the L&H, and the self-importance of it all. But the fate of begrudgers is on the lips of the people. UCD is the alma mater of the rising generation. It is the powerhouse of the Irish State. Its oldest debating society is worth celebrating, remembering and keeping. It is a pleasure as a politician to be invited back to speak. For it is the place where I met not only my wife, Niamh, but many of my best and oldest friends. Well done to Frank Callanan, his collaborators and publishers. In these liberated days, the L&H may not be, as Maeve Binchy puts it, "the sex" of student life-but, then again, it may be.

The Literary and Historical Society (L&H) debating society at University College Dublin is, depending on your point of view, either a school for self-important windbags or possessed of a constitutional status just below that of the cabinet. The universitys-and the countrys-top student debating society was established by Cardinal Newman and predates UCD by a few years. Apparently, having founded the L&H, Newman considered it his most important achievement, but added UCD as an afterthought.

A new history of the societys second half-century has just been published. Edited by eminent barrister, distinguished historian and professional pompositor Frank Callinan, the book is written by L&H old boys and girls whose accounts of their time at the society are presumably as exaggerated as they are entertaining-very, in both cases.

As you'd expect, there's a lot of: "The L&H . . . provides a service, not only to the university, but to the country as a whole." (Gerry Danaher). But there's also a fair bit of: "There was no subject we didn't know about that we didn't speak about, at length . . . No hackneyed cliché undeployed, no tedious banality un-uttered." (Vincent Browne)

There's a good few libels, one hopes, and, somewhat inevitably, Kevin Myers: "Why did I go to the L&H? Simply, because there was nothing better to do in Dublin on a Saturday evening in those days."

Adrian Hardiman, Ruth Dudley Edwards, Maeve Binchy, Hugh O'Flaherty and dozens of lesser-known eejits try to justify their student selves over nearly 400 pages.

Its also a historical document, founded (sort of) on documentary research. In the report of one correspondence secretary, there's a postcard from Christy Moore to the auditor explaining that he would not be able to attend a debate, wishing him success and earnestly hoping that he did not turn out to be "as big a bollox" as some of his predecessors.

Its probably the best memoir you'll buy this year. Available from the L&H at UCD (auditor@literaryandhistorical.com), or even from bookshops for €35.

Auditors past and present, prize-winning debaters and plain old groupies whose happiest memories at University College Dublin were tied up with the Literary and Historical Society will be among the throng tonight at a reception in the OReilly Hall in Belfield for a mammoth trip down memory lane. The occasion is the 150th anniversary of the society, which is being marked by two publications: a reprint of its out-of-print centenary history, edited by the late James Meenan, and a new volume of the history of the societys past 50 years, edited by barrister and author Frank Callanan, who is a former auditor. The contributors to the new volume include a lot of bright sparks including Village editor Vincent Browne, Magill editor Eamon Delaney and writer and historian Ruth Dudley Edwards. Edwardss essay, Patrick Cosgrave--Tory Rebel, is about the late Cosgrave, whom she married in 1965 when he was retiring auditor of the L&H. Also contributing is Supreme Court judge Mr Justice Adrian Hardiman, who was auditor in 1972-3 and writers Ronan Sheehan, Aidan Mathews, Adrian Kenny and Maeve Binchy.

No one can plan these things, but given that its a big week for the L&H, it was an added bonus that the society excelled itself in the 46th Irish Times debating final which was held in UCD on Wednesday night. L&H auditor Frank Kennedy won the individual prize with Ross Maguire, also representing the society, winning individual runner-up. Kennedy, with Noel McGrath, also won the runner-up team prize."