This is the fourth book Anthony Burgess has published concerning the poet Enderby. The first was a very brilliant and original portrait. The second was clever and funny but not so interesting. The third was an anticlimax – a short coda full of good parodies, in which Enderby died grossly. What are we to make of this new Enderby, revived (Mr Burgess tells his readers) by popular request? It might have been kinder not to disturb his bones.

What happens to Enderby now does not matter much. Mr Burgess can go on telling us more and more about him, and the result will be neither here nor there. If a writer kills off a character and then revives him with a complaisant shrug to please the reader, it