John le Carré's decision to donate his literary archive to Oxford University delighted the academic community this week because its value could not be disputed.
There is, however, something of a question mark over the extent to which the powers-that-be at the university should be grateful for the 10 boxes of books, CDs and papers that are now stacked up outside the office of James Langman, the president of the Union.
They contain the collected works of L Ron Hubbard, the founder of the controversial Church of Scientology. They were bequeathed to the Union by David Gaiman, the church's publicity director in Britain in the Sixties, who died, aged 75, in March 2009. Langman tells Mandrake: "One of my predecessors invited Gaiman to address us, but he died before the appointed date.
"I think the will must have been sorted out relatively recently, because the next thing we heard was that he had made provision for us to have all of these boxes delivered to us and now they have arrived. I suppose it will be a matter for the library and the university authorities what is to be done with them, but, I have to say, I haven't actually got around to opening any of them yet."
Hubbard could not lay claim, unlike Le Carré, to being an Oxford man. In fact, when British diplomats looked into the qualifications of the man who founded Tom Cruise's church of choice, they discovered that he had awarded himself a PhD from a college that he had himself acquired.
