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New Statesman – The last Mughal and a clash of civilisations This is fascinating, and demonstrates once more that we seem incapable of learning from history. By a melancholy coincidence, I was reading the excellent Philip Hensher novel The Mulberry Empire while the Afghan death toll was rising, and couldn’t help noticing the parallels there…

My eagle-eyed reader will have noticed a change in the Topsyturvydom profile. We are now in Manchester, home city for both of us, and we feel we’ve come home.Doubtless blogging will be intermittent while we settle in.

Fear of flying | Welcome aboard | Economist.com Recently back from Norway, which involved six flights, so this rang a bell…

The Dumb Britain column in Private Eye is always good for a laugh – recent sample:Anne Robinson: Which is the only letter in the alphabet with three syllables? Contestant: Z. They haven’t picked up this great exchange, though, which I saw on the BBC sport page: Question on BBC1’s Test the Nation: “Who was Winston…

I’m grateful to Pablo Fanque for pointing out that Topsyturvydom was recently featured in the “Blogwatch” section of the North – West Enquirer web site. By that strange internet process that James Joyce would doubtless call the commodius vicus of recirculation, the first name I saw there was that of someone I taught twenty eight…

To Manchester, to see Arlo Guthrie perform. Arlo is a girlhood hero of ‘er indoors, and a favourite of mine. He rarely makes it to these shores – the last time we saw him was 1988- so this was a must-see for us.He was great. Backed by son Abe and grandson (!) plus an excellent…

One of the pleasures of being a toiler in the groves of academe is that you get to work alongside some truly remarkable people. One such is my colleague Harriet Devine. Harriet’s academic reputation rests on her work on eighteenth and nineteenth century authors. She is a highly respected academic in her field, but has…

Our local paper, The Lytham St Annes Express – and I’m not providing a link because it’s such a useless publication – recently saw fit to splash a large photo of Abi Titmuss on the front page. The reason was, apparently, that she might – note the conditional – make a visit to Lytham. The…

Guardian Unlimited Business | | Tesco offers carrot to reduce use of plastic carrier bags Tesco are trying to present themselves as all eco-friendly by this move – but their “biodegradable” bags will still take years to degrade in the landfill sites where they will end up. I really can’t see why Tesco in Ireland…

This confirms my worst fears about the plagiarism epidemic. It’s drearily predictable that the person whose conscience is entirely clear as she makes up to £1000 a week writing essays for students to pass off as their own is a lawyer by trade.Bring back exams! Actually, that is happening, at several HEIs of my acquaintance.…