A few years ago I returned from the Bodleian to find a small parcel in my college pigeon hole, placed there by the Senior Tutor. It contained a small framed picture with the subscription “The Right Reverend Arthur Crawshay Alliston Hall, DD.” I chuckled all the way back to my rooms, where it remains to this day.
My friend and colleague knew that I had recently written about Hall, who was chosen to lead the American Anglican diocese of Vermont in 1893; also that I was also familiar with the decades-old classified advertisement that underpinned the joke on which his gift was based.
