Nice to know that a contributor to The THES opinion pages is prepared to put his money where his mouth is. When David Wells, professor in the School of Languages, Literature and Culture at Birkbeck College, wrote an article attacking the British Library for cutting the number of scholarly books bought in foreign languages, he asked for his fee to be sent to the director of the British Library to buy some of the books he felt were lacking. Birkbeck then awarded him a bottle of port under its "summer media presence scheme". He is now auctioning this among his colleagues, with proceeds to go to the college's School of Languages book fund.