A sneak preview of tomorrow’s books pages in The Irish Times

Fergal Keane on Brian O’Driscoll, Terry Wogan on Graham Norton, John Bruton on Ivan Yates, Diarmaid Ferriter on Des O’Malley, and Anna Carey on Nick Hornby


To whet your appetite for our four pages of books coverage in The Irish Times tomorrow, here is a sneak preview of what you have to look forward to.

Fergal Keane, BBC foreign correspondent and, more to the point, a former rugby corr for the Limerick Leader, tackles Brian O'Driscoll's autobiography, The Test, while fellow BBC veteran Terry Wogan, who also cut his teeth in Limerick, casts a benign eye on his heir apparent Graham Norton's memoir, The Life and Loves of a He-Devil. Elsewhere, writer Dermot Bolger pulls no punches in assessing a new biography of legendary garda Lugs Branigan.

On the political front, former taoiseach John Bruton reviews Full On, the memoirs of his former colleague Ivan Yates's rise and fall, while Diarmaid Ferriter, UCD professor of modern Irish history, uses up a lot of red ink on Des O'Malley's memoir, Conduct Unbecoming.

Over in the fiction aisles, Eileen Battersby celebrates the 30th anniversary of the Martin Amis classic, Money, for her money the best novel of the 1980s, and salutes the classic Spanish Civil War novel, Uncertain Glory, by Joan Sales. Anna Carey reckons Nick Hornby's new novel, Funny Girl, may be his best yet, while Declan Burke applies his little grey cells to Sophie Hannah's Hercule Poirot homage, The Monogram Murders, and Sarah Gilmartin's New Fiction column weighs up Susan Lanigan's first World War novel, White Feathers.