BETWEEN August and September 1915, the war that was to have ended the previous Christmas had sunk to new depths of stupidity and barbarity. In one particularly savage encounter, for example, the defending Turks and the ANZAC-European invasion force actually fought hand-to-hand in total darkness.

It doesn't bear thinking about. Almost 3000 Irish volunteers died during the Gallipoli campaign. It was a savage crime against the youth of the time.

Those Irish that survived faced humiliation when they arrived home.

Republicans made jokes: "Jayz, missus, me son was sho' in Galliploi." "God! Shot in his Gall wha'? Which part of 'im is tha'?" Worse, British rule in Ireland treated the Gallipoli veterans no differently than they did those Irish who had "treacherously" risen up in Dublin in 1916.

Told with great empathetic poignancy.

The Feckin' Book of Irish Insults For Gobdaws as Tick as Manure and Only Half as Useful Colin Murphy and Donal O'Dea The O'Brien Press 7.00 64 pp YOU know how illegal it is to break copyright? Equally, then, is it illegal to claim copyright on material that has been knocking around for decades?

Heard the one about the Mullingar heifer?

Course you have. Or the one about the anorexic woman? "She's so skinny she can dodge raindrops."

Or a red complected woman? "She has a head on her like a slapped arse." I first heard that as: "She has a face on her like a wellslapped arse."

That said, there are a few new Irish insults. Well, new to me.

A fierce eejit "stared at a carton of orange juice for 20 minutes because it said 'concentrate' on the label."

Another? "He has a photographic memory, but there's no film in the camera."

The World's Best Hangover Cures Alex Benady Appletree Books £7.19 70 pp

STRICTLY a Christmasstocking filler for amateur drinkers. The book lurches along, sometimes wittily, from the caveman who took a swig from a jar of fruit left lying for months . . . dirty creatures, cavemen . . . and next morning woke with the world's first hangover, to the various cures for hangovers . . . apparently, cabbage is a great man . . . to the eventual brute truth that there is no way to avoid a hangover if you drink too much. If you abuse your body, you deserve it when it abuses you back.

Irish Family Feuds: Battles over Money, Sex and Power Liam Collins Mentor Books 14.99 263 pp

CHRISTMAS can be a war zone when families get together. Locked up in a house all day. Pubs closed. You can only walk for so many miles.

Indeed, anytime of the year, most families are war zones. Siblings hold on to imagined slights that have festered over the years and then, like a piece of shrapnel, come to the surface. These are the everyday feuds between families like yours and mine.

The book to hand, conversely, covers moneyed families locked in feuds of pigheaded greed, rowing over property, businesses, land.

Collins gives the impression of having enjoyed himself. He also covers literary feuds and it falls to me to point out that Brendan Behan never sued Patrick Kavanagh.

The Prone Gunman Jean-Patrick Manchette Serpent's Tail £8.00 155 pp

MANCHETTE is France's answer to Raymond Chandler. This is his first 'noir' detective novel to be translated into English.

Martin Terrier is a professional hitman who wants out of the business. Has built up enough spondoolicks to retire to the south of France and take up again with a sweetheart of old. A few pages into the yarn and you're simply enthralled. When he announces his plans to retire to his 'employers', they ask for just one more hit, an Arab oil billionaire. Martin says stuff it.

Employers don't like lippy guys. They become very angry. They will stop at nothing to regain his service. When I have time, I intend to read all of Manchette's novels.

Bloody Evidence CSI: Tracking the Killers Michael Sheridan Mentor Books 11.95 233 pp

SHERIDAN throws an awful lot of technical detail at the common reader in the opening chapters of this wide-ranging report on the progress of forensic science.

Then it settles down to an intriguing read in which Sheridan reports on a horrific murder of a young woman in Carraroe, Co Galway, the infamous Black Dahlia case set in Los Angeles, the poignant death of a child beauty queen, little vignettes of horror told by Sheridan with the unflinching eye of a mortician. Skip the opening chapters.