Cronin's volume of literary memoirs needs no introduction at this stage; it has become a classic, and its evocation of what might be called the McDaids epoch of Irish writing adds new life to what was, in some respects, a rather seedy and penurious milieu. The pen-portraits of Myles na Gopaleen/Brian O'Nolan, Patrick Kavanagh and Brendan Behan, in particular, catch more of the essence of these odd, gifted, "contrary" men than most biographers manage to achieve in whole volumes. When the book first appeared, in 1976, some rather insensitive people seem to have felt that Cronin was being unkind to the dead, or at least unreverential, but a rereading convinces me that in fact the dominant tone is humorous and affectionate rather than debunking. There have been few enough outstanding non-fiction prose works in Irish writing of the last quarter-century, but undoubtedly this is one of them.