Chichester

For the last three months or so, I've been spending my Tuesdays at the University of Chichester, where I've been teaching a course on post-War British culture. Today was the last session.

It's been enormous fun. I'm extremely grateful to a splendid group of students for making me feel welcome, and to Hugo Frey - the head of the History department - for inviting me in the first place. I think I'm going back next year, when I trust it will be a pleasure all over again.

University of Chichester

To complete what has been a very fine week, I've just been appointed an Associate Lecturer at the University of Chichester, where I'll be leading a second-year module on post-War British culture in the next academic year.

I'm looking forward to this. As I've said here before, I really like Chichester, both as a city and a university, and I'm very grateful to Dr Hugo Frey, the Head of the History Department, for giving me this opportunity. It's a new and unexpected direction for me.

I'm also grateful to Dr Adam Locks of the Media Studies Department, who first invited me to Chichester to participate in the splendid Avengers conference last year.

I rather wish I'd had the likes of Hugo and Adam around when I was at college, as opposed to the lecturers I did have, who insisted I should be reading Henry James and Edith Wharton rather than Bram Stoker and H.G. Wells. So I'm really pleased to be joining them, in a junior capacity. It should be fun.

Visiting Chichester

I've been this week to the University of Chichester, where I was giving a couple of talks, one on the early days of Doctor Who and the other on the 1970s. And I had a hugely entertaining time. I like the atmosphere of the university a great deal, and indeed of Chichester itself (apart from anything else, there are some great Peter Blake works in the gallery there).

Above all, I like the faculty. And I'm particularly grateful to Dr Hugo Frey, the head of the history department, who extended the invitation to me and whose unstinting hospitality is much appreciated.