Three founding fathers of the media

We had all probably agreed by now that the whole memoir thing was getting out of hand, and a UN-negotiated ceasefire between memoirists and suffering readers was urgently needed. We have had more than enough, surely, of whiny books about alcoholism, rape, criminal pasts, drug addiction, all of which culminate, for some reason, in a scene where the narrator sits alone in a hotel room and ‘considers committing suicide’. Enough already, as they say.

But, hey, what do you know? Take the form away from juvenile American solipsists and give it back to a wily old English fox with some interests in life, and see how enchanting it instantly becomes. Simon Gray’s The Smoking Diaries is one of the funniest books I have ever read in my life; no less excellent, in its very different way, is David Hughes’s The Hack’s Tale, which gives us an idiosyncratic, personal voyage of great elegance and feline cunning.