The best thing about American lecturers was that they meant free books. The cheap-smelling editions of Stephen Vincent Benet or Melville’s Mardi might not have been exactly what we’d been craving, but they were respectable additions to our struggling collections of ancient inherited volumes, second-hand books and the few orange, black and pale green Penguins bought at outrageous prices from the city’s one major bookshop. Even the inevitable student Webster was quite welcome, though of little practical value in a community governed by the O.E.D. The problem really was the American professors who unfortunately went with the books.

The first one we had was easy to place: ageing, mildly successful mod. lit. specialist, on a last spree, perhaps, before retirement. Probably taught a 400 level course or two and was quite liked by his students at home. On our campus, though — raw, freshly bulldozed roads, harsh green vegetation dotted with ragged children and dogs from the village — and particularly in the shabby and dust-ridden English department, rumoured to have once served as a cattle shed, he was certainly not at home. He greeted the first class, large and well disposed after the handouts of books, with a little lecture on the vastness of the cultural gap yawning between us.