It’s not considered cricket, and certainly not gardening, for an author to review his own book. But he has to please his publisher, and she is prodding him to tell his readers that Trad doesn’t only write about garden matters; he (or rather I. This is confusing, as well as embarrassing) has done a bit of writing about wine too.
This plug is for The Story of Wine, from Noah to Now. It’s not new, but over its thirty-odd years it has come to be regarded as a ‘classic text’, unique, timeless, blah, blah – and a new edition was overdue. There are critics who agree. Andrew Roberts, biographer of Napoleon and Churchill, has written a new Foreword. He evidently concurs. Jancisrobinson.com, an authoritative website, calls it ‘a romp of a read’. What pleases the author is that a rather stiff and weighty tome has miraculously become much lighter and more supple, not a paperback but one of a new breed of bed-worthy books. People actually stroke it – though its actual purpose is to be read. It makes a good present, too, for people who like wine. And who doesn’t?
NB This is the first ad in many years of Trad, and hopefully the last.
