As late as 1930, when I was writing my biography of Queen Elizabeth, I was conscious that the title of professor was calculated to frighten people off a book; and it was this lack of interest in academic writing that led me to suppress all my footnotes — an act of self-denial which, in the climate of today, I would neither need, nor wish, to repeat.... Shortly after the publication of my Queen Elizabeth, Eileen Power — a historian who wrote with style and charm — was dining at one of the women's colleges at Oxford. My book came under discussion, particularly the lack of footnotes, and a history don remarked:
'Neale has sold the pass.'
'I don't know about selling the pass,' retorted Eileen Power, 'but he has sold twenty thousand copies.'
From Sir John Neale,'History in a Scientific Age', Nature, vol. ccxcix, no. 4895, 24 August 1963.