The following apology was printed in the Observer's For the record column, Sunday April 12 2009
In the article below we were wrong to accuse the Independent on Sunday of abbreviating its books coverage; the paper has just appointed Katy Guest as its new literary editor. And far from being made redundant, Alan Taylor, doyen of Scotland's literary landscape, is still at the Sunday Herald and still editing the Scottish Review of Books. Apologies all round.
More bloodshed from the world of literary journalism. Scotland's Sunday Herald joins the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Independent on Sunday and the Daily Telegraph in peremptorily abbreviating its coverage of new books. Sunday Herald's literary editor, Alan Taylor, a convivial figure in the Scots literary landscape, has just been made redundant and his duties handed to his colleague Rosemary Goring. Mr Taylor, who has the survival instincts of a Highland goat, will no doubt put his new freedom to profitable advantage. Among his many accomplishments is that indispensable anthology, The Assassin's Cloak (Canongate, £12.99), a bestselling bedside book of "the world's greatest diarists". The good news for Scottish writers is that the Herald insists that "nothing will change" its coverage of books.
