Scheherazade scoops the pot

CONNOISSEURS OF THE book-world spat will no doubt remember the corking row which enveloped James Marriott this time last year. Mr Marriott, The Times’s versatile deputy books editor, made the fatal mistake of suggesting that the modern fiction publishing scene was incorrigibly weighted in favour of the female writer and was, as they say, “hounded off Twitter.” Happily, Mr Marriott survived this ordeal and continues to file his amusing articles.

And yet the suspicion remained that Mr M was on to something, reached more or less the same conclusion. Statistics from the past year revealed a mere handful of male debuts. Publishers conceded that launching a male novelist onto the review pages and the Waterstones shelf had become an increasingly tricky job. Mr Marriott sensibly kept his head down, but there was, naturally, another blazing Twitter row.