Artistic licence: Poison pens at the ready

Salman Rushdie is not ordinarily a man I’d spend any time feeling sorry for - his endless name-dropping (actual quote: ‘‘I pogoed with Van Morrison in Bono’s living room’’) and smiling air of condescension long ago put paid to that.

But over the past week, even this non-Rushdie fan couldn’t help but be moved by the situation in which the Booker Prize-winning novelist now finds himself.

A new, spectacularly nasty and purportedly tell-all ...