It's a rather literary Eye this week. First we have a story from David Boulton about the encouraging North American book tour he has just undertaken. David spent five weeks in Canada and the US promoting his new book Who on earth was Jesus? which offers a single-volume summary of the work of some forty historical Jesus scholars. It was a good start, he tells us, but then started to suffer from its own success. Publishers Weekly and the American Library Association gave the book the equivalent of rave reviews, whereupon the publisher's warehouse was emptied in five days, leaving David to promote a book that was temporarily unavailable. That’s the kind of problem authors dream of!
A hasty reprint came to the rescue. Later an eminent Jesus scholar told a conference in California that the book was 'simply the best and most thorough account' of contemporary Jesus scholarship. But, says David, he spoilt this endorsement by calling the book 'Who the hell was Jesus?'
Eye may well go along to another launch event at Britain Yearly Meeting in May to make sure no such Freudian slips occur.