There is any number of popular writers, from Dan Brown to Stephanie Meyer, who enjoy their fans and their royalties without feeling the need to make larger claims for themselves.

Very true, although it did remind me of this:

http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2010-03-11-lastsong11_CV_N.htm

Talk about not knowing whether to laugh or cry...

I'm sorry, but this may be one of your dullest articles yet - largely because it's a recycling of material you've written over Williamson fairly regularly over the years (going back to at least his retirement, if not earlier, all of which is already avaialble on this site). You're not really saying anything new here, just bringing up the same comparison with Ayckbourn and rubbishing his cited comparison of himself with Chekhov.

I happen to agree with you on a lot of these points, but I'd be interested in seeing you go deeper - for instance, discussing WHY Williamson is not technically innovative in the way that Ayckbourn is (considering, for instance, that, despite being a prolific playwright, for the better part of his career Ayckbourn's spent most of his time directing plays in Scarborough, meaning he's engaged in a wider range of modern and classical writing in a way Williamson simply isn't).

I understand why you write this stuff (it's topical, it doesn't reuqire a lot of new thinking, and, presumably, The Drum asked for a critic with a right-of-reply post), but ... you generally write much deeper than this.

Hi Simon - I agree that it recycles a lot of stuff I've already said (one of the reasons that writing about Williamson bores me to distraction - there's so little that's new or interesting to say). On the other hand, it was an article addressed to a more general audience than theatre nerds, people who wouldn't be familiar with what I've already written. And it was written to state a case. To clarify, I asked The Drum if they'd be interested in reply, they didn't approach me. And I wrote it because Annabel Crabb's article made me so very angry: it was so typical of how non-arts media deal with the arts.

Oh, I agree, Crabb's dealing with the arts is poor in the extreme - perhaps the article may have been better focussed on her than on Williamson (though I suppose he is the football).

Incidentally, I was amused by the Bob Ellis comment immediately afterwards claiming, among other things, you think that Joanna Murray-Smith is good writing. Either he's never read your writing, or he has and is deliberately trying to get your goat...

Haha! I went and read the comments - I don't get notifications so I hadn't caught up. Bob Ellis clearly doesn't read Croggon. But I think I'll live.