It has been an unusually rewarding year for books on history and politics. My own list is of necessity confined to those I've read, but I'm sure they are typical of a much larger crop. Eunan O'Halpin's Defending Ireland: the Irish State and its Enemies Since 1922 (Oxford, £25) is an absorbing, detailed study of some of the most secret pages in Irish history. Our secret service is secret no longer: here is a cast of thousands. Another study of a secret world, but in a different sense, is John Cooney's John Charles McQuaid: Ruler of Catholic Ireland (O'Brien, £25): push some of the trimmings to the side of the plate, and get stuck into the rich red meat of primary research with which it is replete. I much enjoyed Maurice Manning's long-awaited James Dillon: a biography (Wolfhound, £30) a wholly successful rescue from undeserved obscurity of one of the most colourful, principled and intelligent characters in Irish politics. Biography is politics in its most palatable form; and this one goes down a treat.