Brian Vickers taught and researched English literature at Zurich for several decades. He is an impressive literary scholar and historian who has written on Shakespeare, rhetoric, tragedy, edited Bacon and others, and produced a nice shelf full of deeply researched books.

He also seems to have run out of things to do. Nearly every recent issue of the TLS contains an irritated, erudite, cranky, frequently self-defensive letter from Vickers to the editor.