This morning’s Observer column.

Readers with long memories will recall the celebrated Schleswig-Holstein question. This referred to a bundle of thorny diplomatic and other issues arising from the relations of two duchies, Schleswig and Holstein, to the Danish crown and to the German Confederation. It was the bane of diplomats' lives in the late 19th century, but we remember it nowadays mainly because of Lord Palmerston’s famous wisecrack about it. “The Schleswig-Holstein question is so complicated,” he said, “that only three men in Europe have ever understood it. One was Prince Albert, who is dead. The second was a German professor who became mad. I am the third and I have forgotten all about it.”

The issue of "net neutrality" is the Schleswig-Holstein question de nos jours…

My colleague, Ray Corrigan, has a written a very informative review of what is probably the most scholarly book to have emerged so far on the question of Net Neutrality — Christopher Marsden’s Net Neutrality: Towards a Co-regulatory Solution