Irvine Welsh and others

Of all the programmes taking a lightly satirical look at the week's news, the one I always had a fondness for was The Treatment on Radio Five Live, presented by Stuart Maconie in the late-1990s. I liked it enough that I went to a recording to celebrate my birthday one year. So I was a little saddened when Maconie gave my book, A Classless Society, a less-than-enthusiastic review in the New Statesman.

Ah well, you can't win 'em all over. And he does write: 'it is readable and accessible to a degree that may make the sniffier critics suspicious ... It is an entertaining read.'

The same day that was published came a four-star review by Anthony Cummins in Metro: 'His many-tentacled frame of reference is staggering ... Scarcely a paragraph goes by without a killer detail or illuminating anecdote ... The value of this book lies, above all, in the extraordinary amount of material it synthesises. It's easy to see it becoming still more essential as time goes on.'

And then today comes an unsigned review in The Economist: 'the relationship between politics and popular culture [is] meticulously and magnificently described.'

All of which builds rather splendidly to the review that will appear in tomorrow's Daily Telegraph and already available online, in which the great Irvine Welsh gives his view:

'Turner writes brilliantly, creating a compelling narrative of the decade, weaving contrasting elements together with a natural storyteller's aplomb ... In A Classless Society, Turner has produced an amazing work. However, I confess that I'm not looking forward to any book about the 2000s in Britain. I'm at a loss to fathom how any work dedicated to our history in that decade could possibly be as engaging and unique.'

That's just wonderful. I'm extremely grateful to Mr Welsh and to whoever at the Telegraph had the inspired idea of asking him to review the book.

So the current score amongst critics is 10-2: Craig Brown, Anthony Cummins, Matthew Engel, Roger Lewis, Andrew Neather, Richard Ryder, Dominic Sandbrook, David Stenhouse, Irvine Welsh and The Economist in favour; David Aaronovitch and Stuart Maconie against. I think that's a points victory at least.