If you are looking for a gripping end-of-year read, I can recommend “An inquiry into the LSE’s links with Libya and lessons to be learned”.

The 183-page report by Lord Woolf into the entanglement between the London School of Economics and Seif al-Islam Gaddafi, son of the late dictator, includes in-flight philosophy tutorials, academic intrigue, shady companies and mysterious visits from the Libyan embassy.

The old saw that university politics are so intense because the stakes are so low was not true here. The stakes were enormous. Leading figures at a great university took a bet that a vicious dictatorship would reform itself and that Seif al-Islam, whom it had admitted as a doctoral student, would be the instrument. As we know, the bet failed and the LSE’s reputation was badly damaged.