Last night we watched some archival films by Sir Mortimer Wheeler, including an interview late in his life with Magnus Magnusson. Wheeler is a type who would probably never find his way onto television nowadays – so robustly opinionated, so deeply knowledgeable and so obviously politically incorrect. I was particularly interested because he was for a time the Honorary Secretary of the British Academy and I can now more easily imagine him holding court in the British Academy room downstairs with his pipe and carefully curled moustache and vigorously trenchant views.