Visitors to Catholic churches before the Second Vatican Council used to comment on how strange they found the experience. Their reactions weren't necessarily positive and one can understand why the late 20th-century Church wanted to stop creeping people out, as the Americans say. But at least Protestants knew they were entering the sacred space of a religion with the self-confidence to welcome visitors on its own terms, to confront them with a culture nourished by the blood of martyrs and ambitious in the demands it made on the faithful. To experience that feeling now, you would have to visit a mosque. (Incidentally, it seems that Catholic schoolchildren do have to visit mosques these days - but that's another story.) In contrast, a bored visitor sticking his head into this church wouldn't instantly know that it was Catholic, so afraid is it of giving offence. That's pretty shaming; for, however rudimentary the chapels in which our forefathers worshipped, one thing was never in doubt, and that was their communion with Rome.

Certainly, he did not shine in the initial clash of arms in France in 1914 but then neither did French. Told to liaise closely with the BEFs nearest French military neighbour, General Charles Lanrezacs Fifth Army, Sir John was hampered by his failure to understand French and meetings with Lanrezac ended in mutual misunderstanding. He also bore a grudge against Sir Horace Lockwood Smith-Dorrien, commander of one of the two corps making up the BEF, and had strenuously opposed his appointment.

Here's ("Wind is too costly, inefficient and won't stop climate change" - well, no ****, Sherlock)

One English critic recently suggested that the book had been instrumental in ushering in the 'doomy self-absorption' manifest in such goth icons as Marilyn Manson and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Tartt looks completely mystified when I tell her this. 'I don't know what Buffy the Vampire Slayer is. I do know what Marilyn Manson looks like. But I don't think that's true.' Her grasp of popular culture, she says, is shaky at best. She had a passion for rock music at college, 'and I still think Brian Eno is a genius', she drawls. 'But, like, who is J.Lo? Do you see what I'm saying?'

He took his time, too, approaching the net where his precision could tell. He blamed the imposition of indoor conditions for his less-than-dominant start. "I needed some time to adjust to the roof being closed," he said. "It was a bit slower than I thought."