The Penguin Book of Irish Comic Writing, selected and introduced by Ferdia Mac Anna (Penguin, £8.99 in UK)

This is strictly a 20th century compilation, with no room for Shaw or Wilde let alone Lover/Lever it begins with an excerpt from…

This is strictly a 20th century compilation, with no room for Shaw or Wilde let alone Lover/Lever it begins with an excerpt from Ulysses and ends with a piece by Sara Berkeley (born 1967). It goes without saying that Myles na Gopaleen/Flann O'Brien is included (in dual capacity), and Eimar O'Duffy, Mervyn Wall, Patrick Campbell and Beckett are all fairly obvious choices. But the brief is also broad enough to admit an excerpt from Jim in (very popular in my own school days) and an extract from Micheal Mac Liammoir's Put Money in Thy Purse a genuinely imaginative choice. All in all, plenty of reading, not all of it "light", bringing in a range of recent names from Roddy Doyle to Maeve Binchy. Robert Lynd and Benedict Kiely are two notable absentees.