JUMPING THE GUN
THE timing of book reviews has long rested on a gentlemen's agreement; now we have run out of gentlemen. The estab- lished system is that the publisher sends a copy perhaps two, or three weeks before publication with a request that nothing should appear before that date. Reviewers can then be given a dignified amount of time to read and even do some research. Monthly magazines have always broken the embargo without causing serious upset. Radio and television more recently and more damagingly joined in. Now the Murdoch-owned Times and Sunday Times do so not occasionally but as a policy. There is no pressure that can be brought against them. Publishers weep crocodile tears but it is the competitors who mind, who are made to look slow. The literary editor of the Sunday Express has written a public letter to say that he is forced to follow suit. The Observer feels the same. At the moment the claim is that all will be satisfied with being a week ahead but it seems certain that it will slip further into a free-for-all. So chaos is come or at least is coming. This is not the sweeping away of an outdated convention but the destruction of a system that benefited everyone. Books will be reviewed when they are not yet in the shops, which will be upsetting for bookshops. The greatest inconvenience will of course be to the public. It has always been clear that theatre reviewers could be given a day instead of an hour to order their thoughts if they would simply agree on the delay. Nothing has happened. These things are difficult to reverse.
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