Ireland's drinking culture has been exported around the world and given the Irish a reputation as an entertaining and talkative nation. It has been an inspiration for Ireland's other great export, her writers.

From James Joyce, O'Brien and Brendan Behan to Roddy Doyle and Patrick McCabe all have about drinking and its effects, the stuff of life and sometimes the troubling consequences. Irish revelry is included, wakes and weddings, city bars and country pubs, the craic and the ceilidh in a round of stories that celebrate drink and drinking.

The craics the thing when the Irish celebrate, when they travel in Finnegan's wake around the most memorable fictional pubs in Irish literature or stories of the legendary drinkers who can be found propping up the bar and telling you the longest story of your life. This is a round of stories that have the wit, imagination and appetite for life you'll find in any Irish pub.