Mind your language
IT IS hard for most people to be fun- nier than they are when at their most earnest. So we laughed when the Inde- pendent referred to `London's homosex- ual sado-masochistic community'.
But who would not weep when the British Library (until recently known as the Reading Room of the British Muse- um) refers in an official report on its future at the millennium to the 'infor- mation community'? I am indebted to Professor John Sutherland of University College London, who was able to trans- late this phrase as scholars.
It reminds me of the fourth-form delight with which Mr Auberon Waugh discovered that the trendy theological term koinonia, used as the equivalent of community, had many centuries ago also been used as the ordinary word for sex- ual intercourse.
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