Reviewing someone’s first novel, it is customary to be polite about it, to find things to praise in it. So let me say straight away that James Thackara’s The Book Of Kings is printed on very nice paper; the typeface is clear and readable, and Samantha Nundy’s photograph of the author is in focus. And, given that it’s 773 pages long, the author has shown a commendable degree of application and spent a great deal of time on the project.

That, as it turns out, is the literary-London story of the book; that he’s been writing it for years and years, and was writing the Story of the Twentieth Century. This, we were promised, was going to be the great novel of the European experience, covering continents in its magisterial stride. Now, at last, here it is and we can judge for ourselves.