Samuel Beckett remains one of the most significant writers of the twentieth century. Ruthlessly experimental, his plays, novels, and poems represent a sustained attack on the realist tradition. Dr Mark Nixon looks at the mutating nature of Beckett’s literary style and explains why he didn’t choose Waiting for Godot.

As is the norm in many countries with proportional representation, the United Kingdom’s government depends on a small political party to stay in power. Who are the Irish unionists? What is the ideology that guides them? Historian and pro-vice principal of Glasgow University, Murray Pittock, recommends the best books to read to better understand Irish unionism.

Oscar Wilde cultivated an image of himself as an idle genius, dashing off masterpieces with a lazy brilliance. But below the glittering linguistic surface of his works, suggests Sos Eltis, lies an anarchic politics and a phenomenal analysis of power.

A “powerful and aggravating absence of consensus” came to define the Irish political experience, says the historian Richard Bourke. Here he picks the best books for gaining a range of perspectives on Irish history, singling out James Joyce as offering insight into the divergence of nationalist opinion.

The author chooses five books on the Troubles, describing his own relationship with Ireland and his journey through the grief caused by the death of his identical twin in the 1979 bombing.

The bestselling Irish novelist and author of Damage selects five books to help us understand the narrative of Irish history. She argues that “the permanent narrative of victimhood is not quite accurate”

Writer and Dark Age historian delves into five books on Celtic history, and talks about the challenge of separating history from legend. One priority for any Dark Age historian, he says, is “to avoid these awful bogs”

One of Ireland’s best-known contemporary painters discusses five books on early Irish history and explains that the myriad of oddly named and often eccentric Irish saints are in fact mythical ancestors or local gods