"Every prime minister needs a Willie." The book leaps back and forth in time so we get, "He dyed for Ireland, " after Gerry Adams' hair mysteriously changed colour from red to black. An Orangeman, John Bryans, on the EU: "We were never part of Europe and we never will be." One great quote Corry hasn't included because it was made by The Bert as an election promise after the book to hand came out: "We will have more beds, more nurses, more patients." Eoghan Corry's next compendium can include it.

Beating Them at Their Own Game How the Irish Conquered English Soccer By Patrick West Liberties Press, 14,89, 237pp WHAT West has brought together are bite-sized portraits of Irish footballers who played in England from the 1940s to the Charlton years, including the history of those times when fans were frisked entering grounds right up to today's family-friendly stadia. Johnny Giles: great reader of the game, resents being called a dirty player . . .

"When you are 5ft 6in and 10 stone you develop a defence mechanism." Oh, you do, you do. Roy Keane: a manager's dream, can break up moves (and body parts), good in the air, can score, defend: "I apologise if I've done something wrong". Don't you just love that 'if'?

Three Sheets To The Wind By Pete Brown Macmillan, 16.70, 450pp DURING his global pub crawl, Brown drank in four continents, 13 countries, 27 towns . . . I think, hic! . . . sampling stouts, lagers, Pils, lambics (sour tasting beer from Belgium) and bar snacks, from crisps in Britain to barbecued goat meat in Kenya . . . guaranteed to grow you a bay window belly. His visit to Ireland produces the usual oul' leprecorny claptrap. St Brigid asked for some lepers' bath water and changed it miraculously into beer. We must ask ourselves, missus, who was saving lepers' bath water? Yeats, we are told, was "committed" to keeping Dublin pubs busy. He most certainly was not. Brown comes across as a laidback and beery bloke who loves the Irish and finds Irish pubs the best on the planet, which they may well be, but Yeats didn't think so.

Everyman By Philip Roth Vintage, �7.00, 192pp INEVITABLY, two things preoccupy a Roth character: sex, and New Jersey and its shoreline. The former is now behind Roth's 70something character, the latter is in front of him as he sits looking out to sea, brooding, ruminating on the experiences and regrets of his life. The artist's model who introduced him to mildly kinky sex and who, eventually, turns out to be a nut case. He is not too sane himself when he begins to hate his brother simply because he enjoys greater health. That way lies bitterness. As the end nears, the brooding turns to reflection and peace, of a kind, when he accepts, like the Shakespearean character, that death will come when it will come "and he who dies this year is quit for the next". Somehow, it is not a depressing read and for a deceptively slim book, manages to say a lot.

Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name By Vendela Vida Atlantic Books, �11.00, 226pp CLARISSA is an unwanted reminder of her mother's past. When this extremely beautiful novel opens, Clarissa is 28 and alone. Her mother took off when Clarissa was 14. The man she wrongly believed to be her father has just died. The disclosures when they come are a little too telegraphed. Where else would Clarissa find her real father, for example, other than Lapland where her anthropologist mother spent years studying the society of the Sami? Turns out Clarissa is the product of a rape. This raises many difficult topics and questions. A mother's inability to love. A rape can never be erased. The woman is a victim or a survivor.

Should a survivor erase the past? Indeed, can you erase the past just as night erases day?