Harvard historian Niall Ferguson praised conference organisers at West Virginia University for giving him an apt welcome when he delivered the prestigious Callahan lecture earlier this month. Directing his gaze to a bucket close to the lectern into which water was dripping from the ceiling he noted: “This is to remind me of my native land, where it rains like this more or less every day, and which is why so many people left and came to West Virginia all those years ago.”
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