This is the centenary of the birth of novelist John Creasey, who received “743 rejections slips along the way – before his first crime thriller was accepted in 1932,” writes Margaret Murphey. “Creasey wrote 620 novels under more than 20 pseudonyms, selling 80 million books worldwide and writing across many genres, but he is best known for his crime fiction.”

I wonder how many of those rejections were styled as “Um, we don’t publish this sort of thing. Did you even read our publication before submitting?”