If you’re coming here from James Callan’s Telegraph article (not yet available online), welcome. I’m not certain how accurate he was about calling this place “an addictive mix of urbane musings and taut riffs against the pack mentality of the traditional book-reviewing press,” but I’m honored nonetheless.

Callan is absolutely right about the panties, however. Callan got the info out of me only because he was an affable gent who asked a lot of interesting questions. I never announced the panties here, because I feared that this would invite more packages of panties to the P.O. Box. (Frankly, I’m more interested in panties that are worn on ladies and, if the mood is right, slid down sinuous legs, ideally with a soul attached. All this is the aftermath of a remarkably repressed upbringing, in which the very mention of sex was enough to cause melodramatic pronouncements of surprise, if not flames to spontaneously burn onyx sppors through my bedroom. The many Victorian novels I read growing up certainly didn’t help things.) But perhaps one day, I’ll offer a rundown of the odder packages I’ve received over the past year.