The Press: Your Head Is on Fire

"Some were pleased, some were shocked, none remained indifferent on hearing that the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University, accompanied by his spouse, is to take off tomorrow from, one of the quadrangles of Christ Church in a helicopter."

To the uninitiated, a lighthearted essay on such a topic might seem out of place amid the somber rumblings of the London Times's editorial page. But generations of Britons have learned to expect just such things in the Thunderer's "fourth leader," i.e., the item usually fourth in sequence on its editorial page, an unfailing source of quiet,...