MARRIAGE and columns have this in common: you tend to repeat yourself. More than once in these pages, I have quoted the New Yorker’s legendary film critic Pauline Kael. After President Nixon’s landslide victory in 1972 she wrote: ‘I live in a rather special world. I don’t personally know anyone who voted for Nixon.’
I also live in a rather special world. I don’t personally know anyone who has bought a book called. I can go further. I have a small bookshop. Located in the old milking parlour, it is literary, personally curated and financially the most viable in my bookshop. Charlotte —who does the ordering—and I never even discussed it. Instead, we ordered 10 copies of and declined the opportunity to stock the ‘bestseller of all time’.
