Over 60 years ago an article with the above heading appeared in the Mathematical Gazette, shortly after the celebration in 1932 of the centenary of the birth of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known and admired universally as the author of the Alice books, Lewis Carroll.

At that time a literary critic expressed his opinion that ‘only a mathematician could have written the Alice books’, perhaps because they contain several references to arithmetic. In Wonderland, Alice met the irascible Ugly Duchess. ‘If everybody minded their own business’, the Duchess said in a hoarse growl, ‘the world would go round a great deal faster than it does’.