Prepared for the worst

The London Higher Education Consortium, a grouping of 40 university-like objects within the M25 motorway, is preparing a disaster recovery plan.

The idea is that should something untoward befall an institution - a major fire in laboratories, for example - then a neighbouring partner could step into the breach.

The plan reminds The Diary of how the kidnap of Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith, now provost of University College London, used to be rehearsed when he was director general of Cern, the European particle physics laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland.