‘Books are a load of crap’, wrote Larkin the librarian, for a bit of fun. But some books are not very good, no matter what guff they put on the cover. Those promotional blurbs, where adverbs and adjectives jostle for supremacy, are often as false as Judas.

Shami Chakrabarti, for instance, plugs With the Law on Our Side, the new book by Lady Hale, as ‘accessible, forensic, and breathtakingly humane’. Line-and-length humanity is clearly for those poor souls below the salt. Her ladyship is a grandee with a natty brooch, and must therefore be breathtakingly humane.

It’s verbal sludge. Also, do the publishers really think that Little Bo Peep’s approval will shift a single copy? Lest we forget, Chakrabarti was invited to investigate allegations of anti-Semitism within the Labour party, and claimed she heard little and saw less. You wouldn’t hang a rat on her say-so.

‘Breathtakingly humane’ can take its place in the latrine of perfumed blurb bullshit, alongside old favourites like........

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