Back to St Edmund Hall this weekend for a low-key but delightful reunion of the members of the English faculty who have read the subject over the years. Interesting to find out how many former students of Eng Lit still read for pleasure and what they read. Even one of the dons shyly admitted to reading detective fiction… (Actually so do I, when I’m not immersed in reading about the life and times of Harry Nilsson). In the picture of our relatively un-alcoholic dinner, the gesturing hands behind me belong to Dr Chris Mann, and it was specially interesting to catch up with Guy Mitchell (you can’t see him in this pic) and Geoff Wall (he’s the one in the waistcoat) who translated Madame Bovary for Penguin, and who has also written a life of Flaubert (which is next on my reading list, and will make a nice change from the official biography of the Monkees.)