Publication day — and birthday…

I’ve always been a bit perturbed by the paucity of notable people born on April 10th. I used to try and counter this by the fact that I was born on Easter Sunday (1977), but the baffling movability of lunar and solar cycles meant has meant that Easter has never fallen on the 10th since, so my claims for it being special cut little ice. Flicking through various almanacs (pre-internet era — may as well have been the Bronze Age), I stumbled across the news that Omar Sharif was a 10th April man. But most of my friends had never heard of him (‘Lawrence of Arabia’ was required Christmas viewing in my house), so the 10th April languished — until now. For, behold, upon the 10th of next month falls one of the major events of the publishing calendar. Not only is the new Spike Sanguinetti novel, ‘Hollow Mountain’, coming out, but the newly covered and perfectly sized mass-market paperback of ‘Sign of the Cross’ (image below) emerges too.  Momentous doesn’t get any bigger than that…