There must be something about Ithaca! Just before Christmas the BBC broadcast a programme following the trail of Vladimir Nabokov, the author of the book and the filmscript Lolita.

Sephen Smith called at Cornell to talk to faculty members M.H. Abrams, now 97, who remembers Nabokov and Ken McClane who works in Nabokov's old Goldwin Smith Hall office.

Smith's journey went from the shores of Lake Geneva to Nabokov's childhood haunts in the Russian countryside south of St Petersburg to the streets of New York City and a road trip through the anonymous world of small-town America.

A fascinating progamme which would have been improved, in my opinion, by a little more traditional folk music on the soundtrack.