Lord Gnome's Literary Companion

In the midst of literary hackery and the network of debts and allegiances that is literary London, one repository of fearless literary criticism stands out - the literary review page of "Private Eye".

In this book, Francis Wheen has assembled, in thematic order, a collection of criticism of books.

He attempts to explain the unseen forces that police our literary culture - the literary agents, the editorial directors, the hype-merchants and the back-scratchers.The book takes an astringent look at the vanity and folly of authors, the servility of reviewers and the greed of publishers.

It identifies new genres, such as the "non-book" celebrite vehicle, as well as those authors, such as Shaun Hutson and Catherine Cookson, who, whilst dominating the bestseller lists, are all but ignored by the literary establishment.