As one who had recently to attend to a scathing teatime critique of Plato’s theory of perfectibility, courtesy of a philosophy-studying son, I sat down before the first instalment of Adrian Moore’s new 10-parter (19 September) with more than usual interest.

Thankfully everything one has come to anticipate from the sophisticated end of Radio 4 was there, from grave exegesis to highbrow larking about and, in the person of Professor Richard Sorabji, one of those twinkling donnish expostulators whom you assumed the modern university had given up producing.