It is a familiar sight: the colleague who is forever working away at some lengthy document, which mysteriously never gets to see the light of day. But the alternative scenario is worse: the colleague who pulls open his bottom drawer, takes out a fat manuscript, and says: “Actually, I’ve been writing a book.”

There is a popular notion, or delusion, that “we all have at least one book in us”. That dictum should probably be altered to read “at least one bad book in us”. You might even feel that the FT/Goldman Sachs book award encourages more wannabe-authors to commit their insights to paper.