Normally a sunny person who likes to look for the positive in life, I seem to have fallen victim to a certain cynicism while writing my Endpaper column for the Spring edition of The Author, published by the Society of Authors. Maybe I really do believe that, as an author, you should should embrace Buddhist simplicity and ‘walk through your...

For those who are finding that everyday life is just a little bit too easygoing at present, here is a new crisis to help wake you in the early hours with an attack of the horrors. There is a terrible decline in the supply of what the press call “traditional husbands”. It is not a...