We should lose sleep over lost art of editing

I’VE COME to realise that I’m a very slow reader. Three pages in bed and I’m out like a light.

I have three books on the go — Andrew Roberts’s mammoth biography of Churchill, David Cameron’s chunky autobiography and now the third volume in Charles Moore’s Thatcher trilogy. Given their subject matter, it is no surprise all these volumes weigh in at between 730 and 1,100 pages. I doubt I’ll have finished any of them by Christmas.

For publishers who seem to have lost the art of editing, this is a major problem. Paper costs have soared over the last 20 years — but book prices haven’t increased at all.