Claire Tomalin and Michael Frayn are married to one another, but they’re also finalists for a Whitbread Award and competing. “Perhaps the most startling thing the Frayn/Tomalin news has brought to light is the suspicion – or perhaps it’s even a schadenfreudian certainty – that writers must not get on. They are, we seem to imagine, selfish, competitive and vampiric by nature – sucking real life and friendships dry for the sake of fiction.”