I have a high regard for Dr Simon’s work, which has fully lived up to its original promise, and for her commitment to the profession. What I should like to stress is the wider context. Medieval German language and literature and the early modern period will no longer be taught for German at King’s College London. Provision for this important specialism over the whole of the United Kingdom, through similar moves, was already very thin before this latest cut by Bristol. There is now a danger that the whole of the first thousand years of German literature and literacy will no longer be known to students of German across the country. In view of the great richness of Middle High German literature, quite apart from Reformation studies, this would be an impoverishment comparable to not teaching anything in English before Shakespeare.