Daily hate Mail - and good wishes to Paul Dacre

Two authors du jour have evacuated their literary bowels all over the poor old Daily Mail.

First there’s journalist and novelist Tim Heald who’s upset about the paper’s recent serialisation of his book Princess Margaret: A Life Unravelled. On his blog he writes: “We were able to look at the text before publication in the Mail [but] I was depressed by the reaction of those who read it. Although we got four whole pages the “extract” seemed relatively hidden and unblurbed and it seemed to perpetuate the old two-dimensional myths about the princess rather than the much more interesting and complicated truths which I felt I had at least touched on in the book. Alastair Campbell refused to let his new memoirs be sold for serialisation. I never thought I would live to see the day when I had a sneaking wish to almost agree with him.”

And talking of Alastair, here he is on his new Blair Years blog: "I don’t allow Mail newspapers in the house on account of the fact that I regard/view them as a rather unpleasant poison against anything that is good about being alive in Britain, or indeed anywhere else on the planet."

So, alas, it falls to Arcati alone to wish the Mail’s editor-in-chief Paul Dacre – listed at No 10 in the Guardian’s top 100 media movers and shakers chart today - a speedy recovery from what I understand is a very serious illness.