Time for genuflection

So what are the real benefits of becoming a professor? Kathy Burk, newly ensconced in a history chair at University College, London, enlivened a highly entertaining inaugural on Anglo-American relations last week by explaining that she had wanted to use her title - a vintage first world war quote from Lord Northcliffe to the effect that "We Are On Our Knees Before The Americans" - as a title for a journal article when a research student back in the 1970s. Dissuaded at the time by an editor who felt the arresting image a trifle gaudy for his purposes, she had to wait until she had the license of professorial status before feeling safe in reviving it.