The more often celebrated, more visible side of Dublin life emerges in Brendan Behans column which ran in The Irish Press from 1954 to 1956; it stopped around the time his play The Quare Fellow brought him international fame and success. But here too, in a new selection of those columns, is a touch of the exotic, because Behan was as much at home wandering around the markets at Les Halles as he was in the snug of a pub in Dublin.

The tone of his pieces is rare too (as are the illustrations, by his wife Beatrice, that accompany them). They are, his friend Anthony Cronin points out in a foreword, to some extent modelled on Myles na Gopaleens Cruiskeen Lawn in The Irish Times, but where the Myles column was savage, satirical and learned, Behans style was more gentle, not directed at any but the most broad targets, and the column is largely done in dialogues between working-class Dublin characters. These pieces, says Cronin, "are the nearest simulacrum of Brendan Behan talking that we have".

Its a language full of vanished vocabulary, some of it explained in extensive notes at the back, which follow the bonus of a little short story, Christmas Eve in the Graveyard, published here for the first time.

The bulk of this volume is made up of Behans weekly articles for the Irish Press in the 1950s. Many of them have been republished already, but this is a new selection and while the topical references have blurred over the years, the best of the pieces (some were obviously written quickly and to order) compare favourably with Myles na Gopaleens unique column for this paper. Ideal for a relaxed read. A bonus is the short story Christmas Eve in the Graveyard, which only came to light recently through an art auction in Dublin. There is a foreword by Anthony Cronin and pleasant black-and-white drawings by Behans wife, the late Beatrice Behan (nee Salkeld).