Artistic licence: Relative values

Hanif Kureishi, the acclaimed author of The Buddha Of Suburbia and the films Venus and My Beautiful Laundrette, is used to seeing profiles of himself in the newspapers. Nonetheless, an article published recently in the London Independent must have sent a shock through his system. The piece was by his sister Yasmin, and it was packed with a bile-filled invective that made for difficult reading.

Yasmin accused Kureishi of swallowing up pieces of ...