Everyone else has been nominating their books of the year, so I might as well name mine. In no particular order, here are ten I'm very glad came my way in 1998:
Carlo Gebler's How to Murder a Man (Little, Brown). I haven't read many new Irish novels in the last twelve months, but for its narrative energy and limpid prose this chilling account of sectarian horror in 19th-century Monaghan would stand out in any year.
Peter Pearson's Between the Mountains and the Sea (O'Brien). The title refers to the Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown borough, but that gives no idea of Peter Pearson's achievement as he lovingly details the historical, social and architectural features of thirty of the borough's separate areas, from Shankill to Rathfarnham, Killiney to Clonskeagh and Sandycove to Stepaside. And the book is superbly illustrated with hundreds of photographs.
Beranger's Antique Buildings of Ireland (Four Courts). Many of the buildings featured in these full-colour topographical drawings have long gone, but the Dutch-born Gabriel Beranger (c.1730-1817) had a wonderful eye and superb draughtmanship, and this selection of his work offers a fascinating glimpse into a vanished Ireland, aided by Peter Harbison's evocative and informative commentary.
The Oxford Companion to Irish History (Oxford). An invaluable source book, with 1,800 separate entries alphabetically arranged. I've been consulting it all year.
Henry Boylan's A Dictionary of Irish Biography (Gill & Macmillan). This third edition of an already classic reference book outlines the lives and achievements of 1,700 Irish people from the 5th century to our own times. Again, one of my mostthumbed books of the year.
Michael Schmidt's Lives of the Poets (Weidenfeld & Nicolson). Actually, not so much lives (though brief lives are given) as evaluations of more than 250 English-language poets from Gower and Chaucer to Paul Muldoon and Carol Ann Duffy. Almost all the evaluations in this 900-page book are distinguished by arresting, sometimes startling, insights.
Ian Hamilton's The Trouble with Money (Bloomsbury). One of the finest essayists and critics writing today turns his attention to (among others) Tennyson, Arnold, Ford Madox Ford, Salman Rushdie, Philip Larkin, Seamus Heaney, Julie Christie, Mohammed al-Fayed, Glenn Hoddle, Terry Venables and last year's FA Cup Final. Both the prose and the insights it enshrines are wonderfully invigorating
Kenneth Koch's Making Your Own Days (Scribner). This book, by one of America's most distinguished poets, is subtitled "The Pleasures of Reading and Writing Poetry", and what pleasures he conveys! I've never read a book that explains poetry so well, or so unpretentiously. At the moment it's only available in the US, but if you have a friend or relative there, get them to send it to you.
Cole Porter, by William McBrien (HarperCollins). A wellresearched and elegantly written biography of the man who, along with the Gershwins and Rodgers and Hart, wrote the definitive popular songs of the century. Never such innocence again. Or wit, either.
The Complete Works by George Orwell (Secker & Warburg). I wish; sadly, no one has seen fit to send me this 8,500-page, 20volume set which costs a mere £750. Actually, you can keep most of the novels; the essays and journalism are what ensure Orwell's place as one of the century's great and necessary writers. Still, if anyone has a spare set . . .
I was incorrect when I wrote a couple of weeks back that the name of Paul Durcan's forthcoming volume is The Mary Rob- inson Years. In fact, the poet tells me, he came up with The Mary Robinson Years as the working subtitle, but somehow or other that's what ended up in the Harvill catalogue as the actual title.
Instead, the book's real title ("the one and only title," the poet insists) is Greetings to Our Friends in Brazil. I like it, but I like The Mary Robinson Years, also. Maybe he'll do a book under that name next.
When I wrote last week that poetry, far from being the new rock `n' roll, doesn't generally sell very well, I hadn't been at the Waterstone's launch of Brendan Kennelly's new book of poems, The Singing Tree (Abbey Press).
On the night, the place was so full that scores of people had to perch on the stairs without even a view of the poet as he was reading. This man has fans, I can tell you, and he gives them what they want. Afterwards the queue of people waiting patiently for him to sign their copy of his book was eloquent testament to his appeal.