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University staff need not be surprised at the failure to improve their salaries or at the government's insistence on imposing a heavy research and assessment system when The THES can publish an article such as that by Anne Sebba ("A second world war of words", January 21), which begins: "For most academics, used to pursuing a serenely protected life devoted to students, scholarship and research ..." With friends like this ...!

Harry Dickinson Department of history University of Edinburgh