[Jeremy Nicholas]

Americans, by and large, seem to be as ignorant about (and as indifferent towards) Jerome as the British. During 2009, the 150th anniversary of Jerome’s birth, only one UK national newspaper chose to run anything to mark the event. That exception was The Daily Telegraph who only sprang into action after they published my letter bemoaning the lack of interest in Jerome. They dispatched, at my suggestion, a reporter – the fragrant Celia Walden (now sadly married to Piers Morgan) – to Walsall to see if anyone had ever heard of its most famous son. The results were predictably depressing. Interestingly, the only two countries to have contributed to the sesquicentenary in their national press were Russia and Czechoslovakia where Jerome is, clearly, more highly regarded.