In his book Small World, David Lodge has the globe-trotting Maurice Zapp explain the revolution that had taken place in academic life during the 1970s. Two things had become more portable – information and people – and three things had made this possible ‘jet travel, direct-dialling telephone and the Xerox machine’. As long as you have access to these, Zapp explains, ‘you're plugged into the only university that actually matters – the global campus. A young man in a hurry can see the world by conference-hopping’. That is the theme of Lodge's book.