Ephraim Hardcastle

NATIONAL trust boss Dame helen Ghosh, 61, who asked thousands of the charity’s volunteers to anonymously disclose if they were ‘gay’ or ‘trans’, is to become the first female master of Oxford’s balliol College. Why are so many academics keen to be governed by those Sir roy Strong calls ‘the blair government in exile’? Lord (Chris) Smith, having twice presided over the flooding of Somerset as chairman of the Environment agency, was bequeathed Pembroke College, Cambridge. Ex-Guardian editor alan rusbridger, who steered his paper to financial ruin, was installed at Oxford’s Lady Margaret hall. It seems that nothing quite succeeds in academe like failure.