Michael Gove has incurred the wrath of an army of angry Twilight fans after rubbishing Stephenie Meyer's hit series, saying he'd rather his children read Middlemarch.
In a speech at Brighton College on Thursday, the education secretary told his audience: "Too many children are only too happy to lose themselves in Stephenie Meyer."
"There is a Great Tradition of English Literature, a Canon of transcendent works, & Breaking Dawn is not part of it," he continued.
Michael Gove criticised children who read Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series
Fans of the vampire trilogy rushed to defend the Twilight author, while others took the chance to criticise Gove and his waspish tongue.
"You come home to find your 17-year-old daughter engrossed in a book. Which would delight you more... Twilight or Middlemarch?," Gove then added, according to a Financial Times reporter.
But taking on Twilight wasn't enough for the minister, who then gave the game pool a pummelling shortly after launching an attack on the most downloaded game of all time - Angry Birds.
"You see your son is totally absorbed, hunched over the family laptop," Gove said. "You steal a look over his shoulder - and what would please you more - to see him playing Angry Birds, or coding?," Politics.co.uk reported.
"Your son says he wants to spend more time with one particular group of friends. Which would be more inspiring - because he wants to improve his pool or because they're in the cadets and he wants to join?"
On hearing of Gove's speech, HuffPost reader Simon Gosden even created a meme:
Gove appeared at Brighton College, recently named the UK's independent school of the year, to deliver a speech about the government's attempts to address the educational attainment gap.
Perhaps Gove would prefer children read his special edition King James Bible, to which he has provided the foreword?