To be compared with Balzac by Heinrich Boll must be as good as it gets as a writer. Benedict Kiely writes as he talks, the soft cadences of his voice drizzling like honey across the pages. He has been a scribe for nearly 60 years, and with each book has added to his reputation as novelist, short-story writer and essayist. His second volume of memoirs is rich in anecdote and verse. It begins with his arrival in Dublin from Omagh, Co Tyrone, in 1941 and chronicles his career in his adopted city and further afield. He writes of Joyce, Behan, Kavanagh, Sean O' Sullivan and Francis MacManus and includes a well-deserved tribute to the great Capuchin editor, Father Senan, a mentor for many more besides. UCD's Earlsfort Terrace was a small and heady world. Even as a student, Kiely had part-time work as a journalist and access to the great and not so good. He knew all the best watering-holes and ribald songs. He went on to meet the Queen of England. He reminisces about Radio Eireann and Brinsley MacNamara, sojourns in Cambridge and work on the national newspapers. But, while he writes of his milieu in all its diversity, he sidesteps the more intimate details of his own life. Next volume . . . please.