Bibliofile

One of the "boastful, autobiographical" writers Naipaul may have had in mind, Salman Rushdie, had his first public reading of his new novel, Shalimar the Clown. The novel, which will be out only next year by this time, is about a travelling village of Kashmiri entertainers.

Publishers know that feeling: of backing the wrong book. In this case, it was a toss-up between two books that were clearly imperishable classics: the Bible and the English dictionary. The head of the Cambridge University Press, Stephen Bourne, in Delhi last week for the opening of a brand-new Cambridge House, recalled the story of how the English dictionary project had first come to them. But the cautious Cambridge synod rejected it as a losing proposition, forcing the dictionary-makers to approach OUP. And then the unthinkable happened: the market for Bibles started declining while the Oxford English Dictionary became an all-time money-spinner.