It is common enough to review a book by a friend, but rare when that friend is not just the author of the book but also the publisher, and not just the publisher of the book but of the magazine in which the review appears. Such is the chutzpah of Naim Attallah – the ebullient and energetic Palestinian who began his life in England as a steeple-jack and has since scaled the spires of literary London.

Women might have been a fiasco: so many of us make fools of ourselves when we sound off about the opposite sex. If it turns out to be something of a triumph this is because Attallah cleverly limits his own contribution to a charming 'Prelude' which in five pages tells