I’m with you, I’ve never understood why short stories have fallen out of favour, they’re still clearly being written. In fact that last book I bought – coincidentally to support Salt Books – was a collection of stories, Elizabeth Baines’ ‘Balancing on the Edge of the World’ and you’re quite right, it was a mixed bag, not something you could sit and read in one sitting. Well, you could, but you wouldn’t appreciate it. And that’s the point I make in my review of the book, that even though it took be four days to read it, despite it only being 95 pages in length, I still felt that I’s rushed it.

I’ve always felt that if I read a short story collection where I actually like every book, I’m almost disappointed…because I know not everyone has the same tastes I do. As odd as it sounds, I think anthologies should be, as you say, patchy…because that one story I didn’t quite like was probably the one story that someone else adored. Wider audiences and all that…