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Eliot Wilson's avatar

That Will Lloyd review is quite something. I’m not saying he’s wrong. But it’s… quite something.

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Alexander Larman's avatar

It reads like a personal grudge being publicly settled. I have no idea as to whether this is the case, but that is how it comes across.

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Eliot Wilson's avatar

A personal grudge or possibly just a bête noire. There are people in public life whose books I might be tempted to review in similar vein. Not always for a reason clear outside my head.

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Alexander Larman's avatar

I worry sometimes that I get worked up into a miniature frenzy by how ridiculous these people seem. Jolyon Maugham, for instance.

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Eliot Wilson's avatar

Oh, I don’t think you’re alone on that one. He makes it very easy with his fox-culling, kimono-wearing, case-losing ways.

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Alexander Larman's avatar

I cannot help it. The classic writer’s curse.

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Alexander Larman's avatar

He does. But I fear that I feel about him what a lot of people do about, say, Rupert Murdoch or JK Rowling, and that this is based on little other than the ridiculousness of the public profile.

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Eliot Wilson's avatar

There you go again, with your scepticism and your rigorous self-examination.

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