John Langridge should be well known to readers for Lizarralde, a rather wonderful novel (illustrated by Paul Cook, no less) which tells the tale of a Spanish barbel angler as he tries to come to terms with his experience of the civil war. If you haven’t read it, do get hold of a copy, because there aren’t many books about fishing like it – apart, as it happens, from Aphrodite’s Carp. Here, I will hold my hand up and say that I generally look forward to tomes about carp about as much as I do to tax demands, but the supply of books on coarse fishing having dried up to a trickle, there was no avoiding this one. The first twenty pages took several nights, experience of previous works on the subject having conditioned me to fall asleep instantly, and then all of a sudden, Langridge seized my imagination, filling my head with all kinds of heresies about which way carp travelled around the world, chucking in a – too short – chapter on Koi breeding, before going on to discuss all the different kinds of carp, aquaculture, carp recipes and literature. Being the kind of writer he is, John even kept my attention during the compulsory sad bastard chapter on how to catch my least favourite fish and when I reached the end of the book I was actually sorry to have done so. I would go so far as to say that Aphrodite’s Carp is one of the best texts about fish I have ever read, my pleasure being considerably enhanced by the unexpected quarter from which it came. Let’s see more from this bloke.