Perhaps most useful is Eco’s writing advice: ‘You are not Proust. Do not write long sentences.’ ‘Do not explain ironies.’ But I can’t endorse his recommendation to use ‘we’ not ‘I’ because ‘writing is a social act’. In English, at least, using the first-person plural is a good way to appear insufferably pompous.

If I had read this book when beginning my own PhD thesis, I think I would have felt overwhelmed and discouraged by the weight of the advice. But Eco’s conclusion begins, ‘writing a thesis should be fun’, and ‘like cooking a pig: nothing goes to waste’. His personality pervades the book; the best reason for an English-speaking student to read it is to enjoy his pungency and wit while mining it for enduring nuggets of wisdom.