All that said, I increasingly find it the case that being in an occupation that involves reading enormous amounts of non-fiction written material all day, my tolerance for serious fiction is far lower than it used to be. I find myself not reading fiction for long periods and then going through a werewolf-like periodic frenzy in which I end up ploughing through mindless pap with serious gusto. But that’s probably what comes from an education that largely involves reading Clausewitz and writing about the missile gap and naval strategy in the Baltic.