About once a year (or actually much more frequently) the London literary world shoots itself in the foot and confirms what the 'real world' believes, that it is composed of a bunch of snobby interbred reactionaries. This piece describing current events at a leading literary agency is a classic of its type. For those of you who can't be bothered to follow the link (and who can blame you?) here is a taster:

 “On the surface we all get on brilliantly, but on a personal level we all f***ing loathe each other,” as the editorial director of one of the country’s largest publishing houses cheerfully confided yesterday. “I’ll tell you everything but it’s career death if I go on record. In my view what’s happening in publishing in the past few days is a catastrophe. Everyone is horribly excited.”

And here is a glorious graphic.

And while all that backstabbing and gossip is going on there is a real literary issue. The British Government, not content with appearing to stand by while public libraries are allowed to wither (although perhaps that is about to change), is now threatening to undermine the forward-thinking digital programme at the British Library. Lynne Brindley, the Library's Chief Executive, has written courageously and forthrightly about the issue in today's Observer. The irony is that, while the Google Library Project absorbs a huge amount of attention and legal bills in order to be allowed to digitise books which the publishing industry is separately arranging to digitise without subsidy, one of the world's great libraries is being forced to beg to be able to digitise and thus protect and make available the very books which need to be digitised and need to be funded. It drives me to distraction.