Taking and Giving Hope: a Response to Ros Gill’s “What Would Les Back Do? If Generosity Could Save Us… a Review of Les Back’s Academic Diary: Or Why Higher Education Still Matters (2016: Goldsmiths Press, 272 pp)”

There is always a hiatus between finalizing the content of a book and its assembly as a glued and bound physical object ready to be flicked through and read. For authors, it is often a time of apprehension. In the days before the appearance of Academic Diary: Why Higher Education Still Matters in April 2016, I had one of those moments. The book, as the subtitle suggests, is an argument for why universities remain precious places for thinking and learning; it is made through documenting seemingly small everyday experiences from an intellectual life both on and off campus.