Every year, at least one book on current Irish political affairs does very well in the Christmas trade and this was obviously cooked up for the purpose. Stephen Collins is the political correspondent for the Sunday Tribune. His work is consistent in its banality and superficiality, qualities well represented in this tome.

Packing his pages with journalistic clichés and trite conclusions, Collins skips through the history of Fianna Fáil since its foundation, concentrating on the period after Lemass retired and Jack Lynch took over. There are some gems in the earlier part. Describing de Valera's policy of executing IRA Volunteers, Collins said he ``did what had to be done, including executing old republican comrades to ensure that liberal democratic values were preserved'' (!) In the same vein Jack Lynch saved the country from the ``forces of anarchy'' i.e. republicans. Collins is partitionist throughout. Even in his facile treatment of the Arms Crisis he dares not peek across the Border to look at the actual conditions which brought about the call for arms from beleagured nationalists who were being driven from their homes. He omits any mention of Bloody Sunday.

The treatment of the Haughey years is by now standard fare and here, as elsewhere, Collins displays not a scrap of originality. Fianna Fáil is the source of all evil and we are given no hint of the role of Fine Gael in political corruption. The latter part of the book relies heavily on Seán Duignan's `One Spin on the Merry-Go-Round' and Fergus Finlay's `Snakes and Ladders'. Collins crassly quotes huge chunks from these, even repeating their authors' amusing anecdotes. The rushed final section on `The Ahern Years' is the most trite of all (two and a half paragraphs on the peace process, including the negotiation of the Good Friday Agreement) and reads like a Fine Gael backbencher's speech. Sadly, this stuff is typical of what passes for political analysis by many of the `pol corrs' who dominate media coverage of Leinster House. Don't buy it.