Great Scott
Sir: I am sadly accustomed to finding it easier to impart information than under- standing to the inhabitants of the bottom right hand corner of England, whether they be businessmen, lawyers, civil servants or dons, but Professor Trevor-Roper's back- hander in his article `Great Scott', in the paragraph beginning 'ironically', is a bit much even from one who was an Oxford notable in my time.
The Scots do not live on Scott's name. A very small area in the part of the country with which the Professor claims acquaint- ance does derive some small revenue from visitors on this account. So far as my part of Scotland 'lives on' anything it is, fortun- ately, the capital investment of more per- ceptive Americans.
I understand 'parochialism' to connote an unwillingness to receive or adapt to the ideas or habits of others. So far as this is rife in Great Britain it is so, in my ex- perience, far more in the London-Oxbridge- Redbrick-south-east England industrialist axis than anywhere else. In business and pro- fessional as well as social life the Scandin- avians, French, Germans and Americans are far easier to understand and share with than anything breathing south of the line from Birmingham to the Wash, but I haven't given up yet. The Professor should get a sab- batical and try penetrating north of Edin- burgh next time.
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