There’s something awful about a bad review. By which I mean, one can sometimes feel rather sorry for the poor writer suffering under a prolonged and vicious barrage (one thinks of some of Dale Peck’s screeds in the New Republic for instance) that leaves him – and by its end, the reader too – shell-shocked. All that time and effort spent, just so some hack bastard can tear it to pieces for the (undoubted) entertainment of bastard readers who weren’t going to buy the bastarding book anyway.
On the other hand, sometimes the author is Alastair Campbell. Fair game, in other words. And, to be honest, Peter Kemp’s Sunday Times review is kinder than it might have been. That’s to say, other folk will enjoy plunging the knife in deeper than does Kemp. Though he draws plenty of blood himself:
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