With so many books published annually, and so little space available to a critic, it seems extravagant to pay attention to rubbish, but in this case there may be a lesson to be won from the experience. The God Beneath the Sea … is very bad. It is almost impossible to read, let alone assess.

The editor is to blame as much as anybody. Personal taste is one thing, but The God Beneath the Sea is quite another; and whoever accepted the manuscript in its published form has rendered a disservice to the authors. Leon Garfield and Edward Blishen have fallen into the trap they tried to avoid. The prose is overblown Victoriana, 'fine' writing at its worst, cliché-ridden to the point of satire, falsely poetic, groaning with imagery and, among such a grandiloquent mess, intrusively colloquial at times.

Worst of all, the authors are so coy in...