NOT LONG AGO Private Eye’s “Literary Review” column took it into its head to attack the novelist and critic Philip Hensher. Naturally, the Eye never needs an excuse to attack anybody; neither are its standards consistently applied.
And so Mr Hensher’s offence turned out to rest on a conviction that itself peddles from one issue to the next: the idea that modern novels are tedious. His exact words, addressed to readers of the were that “I couldn’t get very excited about much fiction this year
