Some years ago I chanced to render to a prominent and respectable Australian newspaper several reviews of books within a short space of time. In due course they meandered into print, with one exception. When I next met the book review editor I remembered to ask if something was wrong with the missing review. He replied, ‘Oh well, you didn’t think much of it. . .’, meaning the book.

This was true. I had in fact quite enjoyed bringing it, not into hatred or contempt, as the old common law test of defamation has it, but certainly into ridicule, which is another way of satisfying the test. If I recollect correctly, the miserable product that I had reviewed purported to be an insight of some profundity into the past century or so of whodunnits. At the time I took the editor’s remark to mean that his paper was not keen on publishing reviews which did not praise the book in question. Beyond reflecting that this was a flabby policy for a major newspaper I thought no more about the matter.