The Book Critic's Final Cut

Author and Journalist Iain Finlayson and I were at Ritz Newspaper university together, which in retrospect offered the best crash-course journalistic training a scribe could ever hope to have.

Iain, who is currently the non-fiction critic on The Times, and also the book editor on Saga Magazine has just created a compelling new literary book review blog titled New Blog In Town.

But is Iain Finlayson mental?! Why should a prolific author and book critic bother to create a blog?

'I've been told often enough that I need 'presence' (charisma is the next step), so I've finally managed to work up a blog,' he tells me modestly.

But, what a beautifully written Blog! New Blog In Town includes Book Reviews, The Power of Ten (Iain Finlayson's current top favourites) and an End of Year round up of books titled Lives & Letters.

'An abridged version of this end-of-the-year round up was published in the Books pages of The Times on 3rd December. Here’s the full thing,' he blogs.

But doesn't The Times object?

'I'm allowed to post my weekly 'In Short' non-fiction review column from The Times, so not too much trouble to do that (and it gets legally round the News International firewall) and I'd actually like to review some books I don't have room for in The Times or Saga,' Iain says.

Personally, I think the 'New Blog In Town' has more future potential than The Times Literary Supplement.

John Gross

However, if the ex-TLS  editor/my one time fan: the late John Gross was resurrected, then there could be some cut-throat competition as to which man is the best read man in Britain.

By the way, Iain Finlayson is not just any old hack!

His laundry list of books include the wonderful Tangier. City of the Dream, which will be reprinted soon and biographies on lofty subjects such as Boswell, Churchill and Browning.

If Iain has any sense, he now has the perfect opportunity to self-promote his brains out by blogging about his own books on New Blog In Town.