My instructor, Donald Defier, a gnomish balding man, paced at the front of the lecture hall and flipped on an overhead projector.

Perhaps not unconnected with the spread of gnomish undress, the late 20th Century also saw the much awaited arrival of the female gnome.

Spector is gnomish, unstable and grandiose: "Extraordinary accomplishments," he says, meaning his own, "transform the grateful into an audience - and the envious into a mob."