In this article Sutherland surveys over the period of the last 40 years (the length of an average full academic career) the changes which have occurred to the departmental structures and procedures in the teaching of and research into English Literature in British universities. He perceives a marginalization of the English department in the overall university organization and a set of pressures, which he conceives as deleterious: the introduction of an externally based inspectorial regime, professionalization (and a concomitant proletarianization), conference culture (and its associated jargons), field-specialism, optionalization and customerization. The conclusions reached are gloomy, if admittedly subjective.