Empty chairs
Sir: Your Portrait of the Week in the issue of 28 May says, 'Oxford University announced that the Regius Professorship of Greek would be left unfilled for at least two years'. Things are not quite as bad as that. Sir Michael Howard and I would both normally retire at the end of the academic year 1988-89; but he is leaving at the end of this academic year to go to Yale. Both chairs are due to be filled in 1990; so that the history chair will be vacant for two years and the Greek for one.
Things might be a great deal worse; but I cannot pretend that I feel much satisfaction at the prospect of the interregnum. For half the salary of one moderately good footballer, or for a quarter of the sum with which the nation rewards the services of Miss Anne Diamond, both Sir Michael and I could be replaced as soon as we retire. Hugh Lloyd-Jones
Christ Church, Oxford
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