Susan Hill and the GCSE English students

Writer Philip Hensher has had a timely dig at his fellow novelist Susan Hill (pictured) in today’s Independent. He was commenting on Hill’s revelation in the January issue of Standpoint magazine that she has been deluged with emails from GCSE English students studying her novel, I'm King of the Castle, and either abusing her for writing it or demanding that she help them with their essays.

"Hi Sue," begins one of the more brutal missives, which are sent to Hill via her personal website. "I'm doing your book, we have read it and I just want to say it's the most boring crap I ever read, so thanks a lot for ruining my life. Cheers." Another reads: "Hi. I've got this essay to do for tomoz, it's about I'm the King of the Castle and does the setting play an important part in the story. Can you reply tonight and do it in bullet points so I can copy and paste it straight in. Thanks you're a star in advance."

While Hill used her Standpoint article to bemoan the standard of teaching - "It has become distressingly clear to me that too many school pupils are taught badly, lazily, unintelligently and cursorily" - Hensher writes that the "lack of respect" evident in so many of the emails Hill has received is "surely a sign that they [the GCSE students] are not quite convinced that posterity has passed judgement on the works they are being asked to study".

Hensher adds: "I don't say that with any disrespect to authors on these syllabuses; merely that, like all living writers the value of their work is not remotely established."

How will Hill, 66, who won the Somerset Maugham prize for I'm the King of the Castle in 1971, react to Hensher's comments? Probably in the same blithe manner she responded to her student emailers. "I sometimes envy George Elliot and Hardy and Shakespeare, Donne and Yeats, not so much for being great writers as for being dead and unable to be consulted."