"Readers can only be grateful for this unforgettable book,” wrote Daisy Goodwin in the lead review in the Books section of this week’s Sunday Times. The day before, in the Daily Telegraph, Jane Shilling enthused just as much about Candia McWilliams’s What To Look for in Winter: a Memoir in Blindness: “What a precise, poetic dissection of a life this is.”

Here was a book I clearly had to have. And when I have to have something, I have to have it now.

So, after lunch on Sunday, I walked down to Blackwell’s to buy it. A wasted journey. The book isn’t out until today.

If newspapers are going to break embargoes in their determination to outdo each other — and I notice evidence of this more and more on the literary pages — I just wish they would append a line to the review giving the book’s publication date.

And if publishers are going to connive in embargo-breaking, which they often do, can they please try to get stock into the shops early.