Credit Where Credit is Due: Black List Shortens

Readers will know that for a number of (I think, good) reasons, I am very sceptically-disposed towards the Portable Antiquities Scheme and many of its claims. I would imagine that quite a few members of its staff will be aware of that. To this I ascribe the fact that over the past two years or so there have been very few occasions when I have written (courteously of course) to individual members of staff and received replies which, not to put too fine a point on it, have not exactly overwhelmed me by the warmth or fullness of the reply. In a number of cases my request for information went unanswered. Over the past few days, I've been trying to chase up a couple of things in connection with something I plan to write in February and have written to several members of PAS staff. Without exception, I have been delightfully surprised how nice they can be. One has just (unasked) sent me an offprint of an article (about coins if anyone really wants to know) which I'd heard of and wanted to see which would have been very difficult to obtain. I just wanted to put that on record because it is rare these days I have the chance to say something nice about our colleagues in Bloomsbury. Thank you guys.