Posts from a certain catergory(or catergories) listed

I’m going to be using wordpress as a hybrid blog/cms and I’m going to be doing quite a bit of template hacking to get it looking how I’ve got it planned in my head.

I’m more than competent with the html/css side of things but I’m a little stuck when it comes to the php side of things.

Anyway, I’m looking for a way to list a set number of the latest posts from a set catergory (or catergories) on a page (any page) but am yet to find anything helpful after a few searches on here and google.

Could anyone point me in the right direction?