Found upon my return from India that British and Birmingham writer David Lodge had passed away. While I cannot trace all the novels of his’ I read, and while I have a false memory of him being the author of a dystopia on an isolationist England returning to postcard pastoral England (namely, Julian Barnes’ England England!), I clearly remember the fun in reading his (Rummidge) campus trilogy, a fictional Midlands campus that sounded like a mix between the University of Birmingham and the Warwick campus. I vaguely remember enjoying Changing Places, and the barbs on US and UK academic lives, while Small World, focussing on the excesses of 1970’s and 1980’s international academic conferences, was both to the point and hilarious. The third volume, Nice Work, is much less of a satire of academic life, as it focus on a couple of characters, gradually switching opinions about the other (character and community). Plus attacking Thatcherism on the side. Since I read these books in the 1990’s. they may have aged or lost their appeal (esp. the trick at the centre of Nice Work), but they were definitely enjoyable at the time.