Nine on a Thursday morning is University Hour for those of us who don’t commute to an office every day. We time the clearing away of breakfast to coincide with Radio 4’s In Our Time. Melvyn Bragg, with his deadpan questioning, is our Thursday educator.

Last week’s programme was a classic of the genre: about an obscure 17th-century physician I’d never heard of, Sir Thomas Browne — and here were three university professors who’d devoted their entire working lives to studying him.