Opening today's Sunday Telegraph and turning to the gossip column about books, Literary Life, (which I couldn't link to for some reason) I found the following:

'Congratulations to Claire Messud, the only British author to feature in the New York Times top five most notable works of fiction of 2006.'

If you may follow the NYT link you'll spot that is the top ten novels (although she does appear to be third and thus arguably could be described as being in the top five). But what surpriseme was that she was described as British. I checked on Wikipedia:

'Born in the United States, Messud grew up in Australia and Canada, returning to the US as a teenager. Her mother is Canadian, her father is of Algerian origin, and her sister is French. Messud was educated at Yale University and then Cambridge, where she met her spouse, the British literary critic James Wood [1]. She has taught in the MFA program at Warren Wilson College in North Carolina and in the Graduate Writing program at Johns Hopkins University. Messud was considered for the 2003 Granta Best of Young British Novelists list, but none of the three passports she held was British.'

I double-checked with Andrew Kidd, described by Robert McCrum as the  'charming, sophisticated publisher of the cutting-edge paperback list at Picador' who confirmed that she is not British.

Why am I pointing this out?

I suppose firstly because I'm fed up with journalistic inaccuracy. It's pretty easy to check that sort of fact. Harder to check whether the £12m Jeffrey Archer is supposed to have received as an advance from Macmillan is correct because we don't disclose our financial arrangements with authors. What I can say is nobody should believe what they read in newspapers, particularly when it comes to authors' advances.

Secondly, because the story is a perfect illustration of globalisation in our industry. The New York Times is as important in the UK now as the London Times used to be. The nationality and domicile of an author is becoming irrelevant.

However, the really important thing is that Claire Messud's books are receiving the attention and praise they deserve. It's not too late to buy The Emperor's Children - just check out the reviews.

Incidentally, can anyone help me find a dvd of my favourite poker film, Big Deal at Dodge city (properly known as A Big Hand for the Little Lady)?