Hi Robbie,

I have a specific point to make regarding a comment in one of your recent posts. You argue (rightly I think) that the Library is the Society's most precious asset. You add that if one day the Society found itself unable to continue running the Library, any university would jump at the chance to purchase it.   If you mean by that "any English university", then I'm very dubious.    And if any English university (even, I'm embarrassed to say, my own Alma Mater) were bidding in the market for the VWML, I wouldn't trust them with it.

Our once-flourishing groves of academe are being converted to joyless factory farms by bureaucrats who will not look beyond the bottom line of a balance sheet. Whenever an injection of capital is required to finance its latest expansion programme, or to reduce its overdraft, then a university's cultural assets are likely to be flogged to the highest bidder, regardless of their historic significance. If you and your colleagues at CSH are contemplating – however remotely – the idea of giving the Library into the care of an English university, please, please, please think again. It would be much safer at the Smithsonian!

By the way, I agree entirely with your observations on the lack of official support for English traditional culture (as compared with Irish, Scottish, etc). For further comments, see my article "England, whose England?" on the Musical Traditions website (www.mustrad.org.uk)

Wassail!