If he can detach academic excellence from the national obsession with poshness, he will be remembered as a revolutionary.
Some such thinkers blame the "Downton Abbey syndrome", that is, the perverse attraction of the trappings of poshness for the downtrodden victims of capitalist excess.
He is not a drawling toff. His is a brisk, self-confident form of poshness: think of a young officer in one of the smarter regiments, getting on with the job in some global hotspot.
