Oh, dear. David Baddiel at The Times Online went thermonuclear on Dan Brown and The DaVinci Code. Let's run an excerpt, shall we?
Harry [Potter], of course, has the get-out clause of being for children. Dan Brown�s get-out clause should have been: �It�s a bestseller, so therefore it�s for those essentially childlike creatures, the general public.� And then everybody would have been happy. Unfortunately, by doing some historical research and putting the Mona Lisa on the cover, Brown makes his book aspire to that quality most jealously guarded by those who consider themselves the reading elite, gravitas. The thing that really makes literary critics furious is the idea that there are people reading TDVC who think that they�re reading a proper book; who think, God save us, that they�re reading a literary novel.
