Over 60 years ago an article with the above heading appeared in the Mathematical Gazette, shortly after the celebration in 1932 of the centenary of the birth of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known and admired universally as the author of the Alice books, Lewis Carroll.

At that time a literary critic expressed his opinion that ‘only a mathematician could have written the Alice books’, perhaps because they contain several references to arithmetic. In Wonderland, Alice met the irascible Ugly Duchess. ‘If everybody minded their own business’, the Duchess said in a hoarse growl, ‘the world would go round a great deal faster than it does’.

Mathematicians of every age have been seen to criticize the proofs of their predecessors or of their contemporaries as ‘not being rigorous’; and often those which they proposed as replacements for the defective proofs were in their turn considered inadequate by the succeeding generation. This apparent repeated putting into question of mathematicians' arguments at length led some people to think these arguments contained a hidden flaw which meant that a proof could never be found unassailable by any criticism.

Since there is far more mathematics even quite elementary mathematics than anyone can carry in their working memory, it must follow that results which are unused will be forgotten, and are then often rediscovered after many years. A tour of some old haunts which are now being opened up again would therefore seem not out of place in a centenary number of the Gazette. Tourists, however, will need some preliminary briefing if they are to enjoy the tour fully.