Recommended reading

Last week The Guardian's "Comment is Free" site ran a series of articles, including one by me, about Andrew Anthony's new book The Fall-Out: How a Guilty Liberal Lost His Innocence. I don't say this lightly: it's an excellent book, and I recommend you read it. There's a particularly good chapter on the heroic figure of Ayaan Hirsi Ali. At least two of my readers will be thrilled that there is also a fleeting reference (p. 53) to the unheroic figure of the late Gerry Healy, a corrupt and stupid rapist, and his fortunately now-defunct Workers' Revolutionary Party. I mention this specifically because the last time I described Healy in such terms, one of those two readers (the other is Nick Cohen, who devoted a gratifyingly long section of his book What's Left? to Healy's shenanigans) angrily demanded whether the law of libel protects the dead (the answer is obviously no, and in any case justification is a complete defence to the charge of libel).