Simon Sebag Montefiore, historian and occasional novelist, found himself nominated for the Bad Sex in Fiction Awards five years ago for his Soviet saga Sashenka, in which a prudish communist woman falls for a louche writer... “and then he disappeared up her skirt” being one of the more memorable lines.
When his new novel One Night in Winter came out last month, staff at the Literary Review, which oversees the award, feverishly flicked through it, expecting to nominate him once more.
But it seems Montefiore may have learned the lesson of the awards, which are meant to discourage writers from unnecessary flights of erotic fantasy. Like Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones novel, he too failed to make the cut this year. Jonathan Beckman, senior editor at the magazine, says: “For all the sex scenes, he leaves us firmly at the bedroom door.”
