There are pursed lips as Bake Off returns. The great British judges know who makes a good madeira cake – and who instantly becomes the bookies’ favourite. After all, they have standards. But here – in a swirl of sloppy chocolate mousse – is an abiding problem for all who seek to judge anything from gastro-ambition to literary acceptance: where do acknowledged rules of excellence chip in? It’s a problem for critics, and for the editors who employ them. Is achievement in fiction, drama, poetry, indeed all (including culinary) art, a matter of criteria, of overarching standards that can be defined and asserted? Or are we talking mere matters of taste? Settle down and pass the poppadoms.
Here’s one absolute matter of taste. Is the poshest new restaurant in town “a dismal experience” or a glowing “testament to a lifetime of forensic appetite and experience”? Do you think it has “far and away the nicest dining room in St James’s” or a “terrible” one, “too big, too modern, no soul … properly catastrophic?” In short, what happens when the critics you hire, the experts who ride high on your menu advising readers, can’t agree? About anything.
Of course different critics have different favourites, and you learn to follow those among them who fit your own
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