Legal Commentary

I've had occasion before to praise the late Noel Annan's wonderful book The Dons: Mentors, Eccentrics and Geniuses, a warm yet unsparing collection of portraits of some leading characters at Oxford and Cambridge.  Here's a timelessly relevant snippet from Annan's portrait of Maurice Bowra.  It feels positively Moneylawish, doesn't it?  Enjoy.

[T]o Bowra appointments were by far the most important issue in the university, and in this he was right.  Appointments matter more than anything else -- more than syllabuses, cost effectiveness, plot ratios, student load, and all the other terms of art with which scholars, if they are to continue to run their affairs, have to concern themselves.  The right men -- outstanding and productive scholars, devoted and stimulating teachers, men of originality and imagination, open-hearted and magnanimous -- are the life-blood of a university.  But where are the paragons to be found?  At the moment of choice the scrupulous quaver.  Original, yes -- but is he sound?  Full of vitality, but a trifle too vulgar?  Draws an audience, does he? -- are we sure he is not a charlatan?  A difficult man -- hardly likely to be acceptable to our colleagues?  And so the inoffensive and second-rate slip in.