Michael Gove hasn’t banned Steinbeck – but perhaps he should have.

I’ve never quite understood why so many people hate Michael Gove. I mean, really hate him. To my mind his heart is so obviously in the right place that I’m happy to forgive him his occasional excesses. It may not quite be the case that anyone who so thoroughly upsets the teaching establishment must be doing something right but it is very plainly something more likely to be right than wrong.

Which, I suppose, means I do understand why so many people hate the Education Secretary. As the left often reminds us (albeit usually tediously) speaking truth to power is rarely popular.

But no, Michael Gove has not banned  the teaching of To Kill A Mockingbird or Of Mice and Men. Nor has he suggested the English literature GCSE begin with Shakespeare and end with Milton. The whole stramash over changes to the curriculum has, as Martha Gill says, been a triumph of mendacious idiocy.