ABSTRACT
THE PROLOGUE It comes as a shock even to the hardiest reviewer to find a volume he is struggling to read, mark, and equitably assess acclaimed in a loud professional organ as already ‘celebrated’ and ‘now available in paperback’. Of course, this puff for the Colls and Dodd compendium appeared only in a publisher’s advertisement, and even when sighted in the TLS version it should not lend special authority to the claim. The weekly supplements have not yet acquired an official standing, though once the UGC is finally replaced with the new and undisguised Government Office for Academic Affairs one imagines that the Murdoch mouthpieces will strive to achieve this relationship.
