The vanity of the Fox

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Vanity publishing is one thing, but vanity management is something else, as civil servants in the DIT can confirm:

"Disturbing revelations emerge from a survey of civil servants working in Liam Fox's Department for International Trade.

"It was no surprise the mandarins found Fox a tetchy boss. But more worryingly, they said he had told them that if they wanted to understand the exciting possibilities of the modern world, they had to read Rising Tides: Facing the Challenges of the New Era by, er, one Liam Fox.

"Worse still, they didn't just have to read it - Fox wanted them to buy it too! If all 2,000 of the department's civil servants were to shell out, they would more than double Fox's sales. Between publication in 2013 and this year, Rising Tides has sold a measly 1,876 copies in the English-speaking world"

Pinched from Private Eye, 25 November.