BOOK REVIEW / Paperbacks: The Rattle of the North: An Anthology of Ulster Prose - ed Patricia Craig: Blackstaff, pounds 9.95

The critic Denis Donoghue says that the themes of Irish literature are few: childhood, isolation, religion and politics. This excellent anthology - novel-extracts from Brian Moore and Caroline Blackwood, poems by Heaney and MacNeice, Tom Paulin analysing the millenarian poetry of Ian Paisley's speeches, C S Lewis, Polly Devlin and many more - allows the North's distinctive voice its full range.