These are bleak times for authors. Most of us – by which I mean those not in the exalted realm inhabited by JK Rowling and Dan Brown – find it ever harder to persuade publishers to give us an advance that will cover a few months’ electricity bills, let alone a sum to keep us supplied with booze and bacon sandwiches for the next couple of years while we write our masterpiece. So we may be tempted to rejoice at the news that the High Court in London has awarded Sarah Thornton £65,000 in damages to compensate her for a single slashing review of her book about modern British artists. The windfall is, I think it safe to assume, rather more than Dr Thornton was paid for writing Seven Days in the Art World in the first place.
