They Asked for my Story. I Have Told it. Enough.

Susan Hill, the 1880s ghost story writer and chum of Michael Gove, appears to have committed the indiscretion of taking advice from the jabbering homunculus about how to win friends and influence people. A non-corporate Norwich outlet for the reading-matter industry was giving away copies of Nineteen Eighty-Four and The Handmaid's Tale donated by a local reading group; Hill cancelled a planned appearance there for "personal reasons" and then penned a Gove-style squeal for the Spectator, accusing the bookshop of victimising Donald Trump and proclaiming that she had boycotted the event in order to protect the free speech of people like Milo Yiannopoulos (although she did concede, by implication, that promoting paedophilia is probably a Bad Thing). In the face of a robust if bemused rebuttal from the bookshop and some unpleasantly factual comments from other writers (one of whom was indelicate enough to point out that Hill has a new novel to push), the unfortunate lady has succumbed to a fit of the vapours and wishes only to be left in peace. It is to be hoped that the jabbering homunculus will at least do her the courtesy of puffing her latest produce in the Murdoch Literary Supplement.