Who is the greatest living author of the British Isles? No, this isn't one of our regular "what's the best book to read on the toilet/in the rain/up a tree" blogs. It's the question exercising Stephen Moss in today's paper, following the Guardian's somewhat cavalier bestowal of the title on Martin Amis last week (prompting one reader to threaten suicide).
And Moss isn't the only one asking this question: Andrew Motion and the Arts Council are also keen to canvass your opinion. In their case, however, the debate (for that is what they hope it will become) is prompted by 2007 being a "David Cohen year".
The biannual prize, worth a whopping £52,500, is awarded to a writer from the UK or Ireland in recognition of a lifetime's achievement in literature - previous winners include the playwright Harold Pinter; novelists Muriel Spark, Doris Lessing, Beryl Bainbridge and William Trevor; poet Thom Gunn and biographer Michael Holroyd.
And that list should provide a clue as to the nature of "greatest" in this case - tonnage of books sold or impact on the publishing industry don't come into it, so bad luck, JK Rowling. Although it leaves, for me at least, the knotty question of how it is possible to have a spanking new "greatest living writer" every two years - do the old ones have automatically to become slightly less great with each new "greatest" arrival to the pantheon?
The authors and critics offering their opinions in Stephen Moss's piece today throw up a list of the usual suspects: Salman Rushdie, AS Byatt, Ian McEwan ... but never mind that. What do you think? Go and tell that nice Mr Motion on the Arts Council blog, but let us know, too.
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