Somehow, I find myself in Jyväskylä today, giving a lecture at the university that is being live-streamed to 20 or 30 other locations around Finland. I will be talking about a subject dear to my heart: the Asian adventures of Finland’s former president Mannerheim.

I offered the organisers a series on “Finns in the Far East”, and they said that the first one should probably be on this subject, as nothing gets the Finns out of bed on a Wednesday faster than the chance to hear more about the M-word.