About a month ago a burglar broke into the Pan Bookshop, lifted  (rather little) cash from the till and then proceeded to urinate and defecate over the stock. This is apparently common behaviour among burglars in the UK (and perhaps elsewhere too).  Fortunately the stupid and unpleasant criminal cut himself on some broken glass and the police were able to track him down. He has pleaded guilty which saves us the trouble of having to go to court. But the affair leaves a nasty taste in the mouth.

On a brighter note Hazel Bell has won the Wheatley Award for the index in W. B. Yeats's Mythologies. In these days of Yahoo, Google and other automatic indexing machines it's great that the Society of Indexers still exists to promote professional indexing by intelligent himan beings. The quality of an index is rarely appreciated by the general reader but it can frequently turn an informative book into a real information resource. Let's hear it for the unsung heroes of the book world.