After years of persecution under Elizabeth I, Catholics hoped that her successor would ease the pressure, but the Scottish king reneged on his early promises and pursued them with renewed savagery. Read in its entirety by William Hope, the first two or three tapes of D L Smith’s highly original first novel set a leisurely, seductive pace. However, the plot quickens and thickens most tastily until, by the end, so jubilant, numerous and life-affirming are The Miracles of Santo Fico (Chivers £17.50) that pretty well everyone seems destined to live happily ever after and even the fountain gushes anew. But then (as Richard Curtis might say) what’s wrong with that?Only Father Elio, the old priest of Santo Fico, looks exclusively to the next world for comfort. The fountain has long since dried up, though a deranged old man and his dog sit beside it all day; a beautiful but embittered widow owns the only hotel; the elderly priest, her uncle, can no longer attract people to his church.
As you’d expect, it takes time to become familiar with the place. Here is a suggestion: just for a while, forsake this dark and anxious northern December and take yourself, in spirit, to Italy It is high summer.

All day long, from a blue and cloudless sky, the blazing sun toasts and desiccates a tiny Tuscan village which clings improbably to sheer cliffs above a darker sea. Named for its blessed fig-tree and flimsily associated with St Francis, the place is off the tourist trail, dusty, sleepy and – to its younger inhabitants – dull. Why, the royalties are even being donated to clear minefields, so you can laugh with heartless glee without endangering your liberal conscience.But best of all is a book which owes nothing to TV or the internet or newspapers, but is entirely a book and nothing else. Christopher Matthew’s Now We Are Sixty (And a Bit) (John Murray £9.99) is the follow-up to his previous volume of geriatric parodies of A A Milne, Now We Are Sixty, and as I said when that book appeared, it’s the kind of wise, perceptive, moving and very funny stuff you used to get in Punch in the 1950s before we all started worshipping the Holy Python in its sacred telly tabernacle And it’s all the better for that..

(Methuen £10.99), Peattie and Taylor’s The Best of Alex 2003 (Masterley £9.99) and The Best of Matt, Matt’s Town and Country and Matt’s Modern Times (all Orion, £4.99) are essential compilations by Britain’s top newspaper cartoonists, and actually read much better when presented together and sequentially in book form. Also well worth buying are Both by Tom Gauld and Simone Lia (Bloomsbury £7.99), a wonderfully quirky and very funny collection in the traditions of Edward Gorey and Stephen Appleby; the hilariously and inventively sick Book of Bunny Suicides by Andy Riley (Hodder £7.99), which manages to overcome the kiss-of-death jacket encomia from David Baddiel and Paul Whitehouse; and Get Your War On by David Rees (Serpent’s Tail £9.99) which, again from the internet, is a refreshingly foulmouthed take on the absurdities of America’s War on Terror (and, for good measure, Iraq as well). I couldn’t see the bloody joke.DUD: Well, of course, you know, Pete, people’s sense of humour must have changed over the years… I bet, when that Da Vinci cartoon first come out, I bet people were killing themselves.

I bet old Da Vinci had an accident when he drew it.Indeed, indeed, and on to this year’s crop of cartoon books Steve Bell’s Unspeakable If… Nor was it lifted by The Wicked Wit of John F Kennedy, compiled by Christina Koning (Michael O’Mara £9.99), a respectful and dull tribute to the womanising warmonger 40 years after his assassination, and which noticeably does not contain the line “Increased security? I need that like a hole in the head!”This is all getting too depressing for words, so let’s quickly belt back to Pete ‘n’ Dud’s book, and turn to the Art Gallery sketch, which contains one of my favourite ever gags.PETE: Have you seen that bloody Leonardo Da Vinci cartoon?… It’s not that I have anything against parody, or that the targets here don’t deserve it, it’s just that the soulless contrivance of it all made my heart sink deeper and deeper with every book. So, when confronted with the nerds’ books stating the bleedin’ obvious, just turn to the relevant section and scream “Are the Kennedys gun-shy?” or “Do beavers piss on flat rocks?” in addition to all the phrases you’re already familiar with.