After his controversial column last week, a former publisher tells the novelist his focus on ‘blood libel’ is blinding him to atrocities in Gaza

I write more in sorrow than in anger. You’ve acknowledged that we are a “disputatious people” so I know you will take this response in the spirit in which it is offered. I have relished every book you’ve written since your very first novel, Coming from Behind, was published in 1983. Much of your writing has resonated: your acuity about campus politics, your refusal to disavow, nay your pride, in your particular ethnic version of the Mancunian working class and your fine satirical instincts.