This article is taken from the December-January 2026 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Get five issues for just £25.
Glance at the literary pages of a broadsheet newspaper, a weekly magazine or, come to think of it, The Critic, at any time between mid-November and the third week in December and what will you find there?
With the exception of an occasional review of one of those determinedly eccentric items published after the book-world cavalcade has moved on in the wake of its autumn jamboree, the available space — much less of it, of course, these days — is almost guaranteed to be filled up by column after column of “Christmas round-ups”.
Oh, and the far-from-enticing section in which mesdames and messieurs “the critics” dilate on the items that they most enjoyed in the course of the preceding year. The Secret Author was but a lad of 27 when he first received the summons — it came by post in those far-off times — asking him to contribute his “Books of the Year” to, as it may have been, the Independent or possibly the Spectator.
Despite his extreme youth, he knew what was expected of him. Which is to say that he picked the three most pretentious and left-field items he could think of, including two by book-world eminences to whom he desperately wanted to suck up, and sent his encomia off, glorying all the while in the fact that here, finally, was positive proof that he had ascended to one of the upper rungs of book-page journalism and become that wholly desirable thing, a pundit.
There are several reasons for the popularity of the “Books of the Year” feature. Literary editors love them because they don’t cost anything: contributors are so delighted to be asked to stump up that they are happy to send the stuff in gratis.
Five pages’ worth of recommendations in, say, the Observer will probably save a cool £2,000 out of a cash-strapped arts budget.
Writers, it scarcely needs to be said, love them even more. What you say in them will nearly always end up being quoted on paperback jackets and in magazine round-ups, and, if shrewdly conducted, the whole exercise can serve as a marvellous piece of free advertising.
You are the lad the Secret Author once was all those decades ago, contemplating the email from the books editor of the Daily Telegraph inviting you to pronounce judgement. What should you do?
Well, the first thing to bear in mind is that recommending friends or people with whom you are professionally connected is pretty much out: your sponsor will notice, and if he or she doesn’t, the compilers of Private Eye’s invaluable “Log Rolling” column undoubtedly will.
There can be certain benefits in discreetly puffing books published by your own publisher, or fellow academics at work in the same field, but even these have a habit of being called out in the vigilant 2020s.
No, what you need to do is bring off the very difficult trick of drawing attention to yourself, your exquisite taste, sensibility and so on, without appearing to do so.
Start by picking something abstruse — not so esoteric as to invite scepticism (that three-volume history of medieval heresy in the original French, say), but sufficient to alert readers to the fact that the selector is an immensely brainy chap: The Lincolnshire Rood-screen 1066-1389, published by the University of Loamshire Press, will do nicely.
Then select a novel published by a tiny independent press with a remark to the effect that it was “a great pity” that so few people reviewed it. This will immediately identify you as a supporter of deserving underdogs and an all-round philanthropic book-world presence.
Finally, as everyone — even in the world of the books pages — likes a man of the people, choose something determinedly “popular”: not just a footballer’s autobiography, but an obscure footballer’s autobiography. Barry Fredge: My Story, by the one-time ornament of non-league Fulchester Rovers, will win you far more brownie points than the ghosted memoir of some pampered Premier League darling.
What if, as well as being asked to contribute your “Books of the Year”, you happen to be asked to file a “Christmas round-up” — the year’s 20 best novels, for example, or the biographies we need to look out for or top gardening books for the amateur horticulturalist?
This is a sub-genre of books coverage that badly needs shaking up. The Secret Author’s view is that these yawn-fests would be vastly more amusing if they were turned on their heads and those involved were invited to choose material they actively disliked.
So let us have a category for “Worst Novel of the Year”, or “Most Misleading Blurb of the Year”, or “Jacket Photograph that Bears Least Resemblance to the Author”, or “Most Risible Celebrity Quote”.
All this would have the effect of galvanising books pages at a time when they are mostly packed out with celebrity filler. And, who knows, the punters might actually want to read them.
