Fun and games at the TLS

‘When everyone appears to be of one accord in thinking the right thing, go the other way.’ This was, broadly speaking, the maxim by which J.C. wrote his weekly N.B. column for the Times Literary Supplement, after inheriting it from David Sexton in 1997. Tonally different to the rest of the paper, N.B. under J.C. became a place where a contrary spirit found its expression in a series of ongoing, in-joking set pieces. From updates on the latest grammatical or linguistic dicta in the (mythical) TLS Reviewer’s Handbook, ‘perambulations’ among bookshops in search of forgotten or out-of-print works, and a set of satirical prizes, such as the Jean Paul Sartre Prize for Prize Refusal, the column was a friend as well as ‘a dependant’ for its author.

The aim was miscellany, as James Campbell, the unmasked pen behind the J.C. persona, points out in his engaging and (naturally) scrupulous introduction (no doubt due to all that exposure to the TLS Reviewer’s Handbook).