Highly connected sets and the excluded grid theorem

We present a short proof of the excluded grid theorem of Robertson and Seym our, the fact that a graph has no large grid minor if and only if it has sm all tree-width. We further propose a very simple obstruction to small tree- width inspired by that proof, showing that a graph has small tree-width if and only if it contains no large highly connected set of vertices. (C) 1999 Academic Press.