I was at Bar School with Sarah, and at the same small college with Kathleen Stock and Dominic Cummings. I never spoke to any of them, as far as I’m aware. My loss: “What is truth?” said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer.’

Last week we had the progressive wing of the Bar improbably posting their complete faith in the Court of Appeal because it affirmed Connolly’s sentence. Now we have the Dundee kid being denounced as a gangster by the same sort of people on the authority of… the Daily Mail!

In light of Phillipe Sands’s latest valuable contribution to our national life, I renew my urgent call to the Chancellor to execute my plan to restore the nation’s finances overnight.

I suspect that the left wing shift of judges (which is real, though exaggerated) is heavily influenced by the impact of low comparative pay to private practice. This impacts the values profile of those seeking to serve. Similar effects in politics, journalism and the civil

If you’re left-brained you actually think: where the F is Augustus?

Why didn’t Coster-Waldau become a leading man post GOT? Absurdly handsome and a genuinely gifted actor. It’s sad to see him in the Lego sets and 6th form script of King & Conqueror.

Yes. Mine was in the Times!

Save for the claim that sourdough is woke, I endorse this message.

Maugham truly is a human (ish) scarab beetle. It’s like a grotesque from a Tom Sharpe novel was somehow brought to life.

The Master of the Rolls has joined the chat.

Enjoying The Rest Is History on WW1. But contemplating how reliant the Schlieffen Plan was on railways, you ask: why weren’t there special forces pre WW2? Railways are so easy to sabotage. Proto SAS could have literally derailed Schlieffen, like confronting Daleks with stairs.

I’ve seen some bizarre blurb before, but my daughter is reading an early print of the first Game of Thrones book, and the Chicago Sun-Times is quoted as saying “it is reminiscent of TH White’s the Once and Future King”. A bit like saying Judge Dredd is reminiscent of Bleak House.

How many SSNs do we have at sea at the moment, Keir?

I know everyone has had sport with this already, but when you see such a magnificent piece of self-sabotage as this, what can one say but: Guy Verhofstadt?

Right: back to work tomorrow, so time for a digital detox as well. À bientôt, friends 😃

Needless to say, activists in Malmesbury, the oldest town in England and Athelstan’s resting place, are trying to stop a statute being erected because it would require a few trees to be removed.

Despite having friends in common, I’ve always considered Carswell an unspeakable cretin, unredeemed even by nature’s amusing joke in making him look like a ventriloquist even though he’s the dummy. Always nice to have one’s character judgements affirmed.

Biggest disappointment of my life? Living through the 1986 visit from Halley’s Comet which was one of the worst and and least visible ever because we were the wrong side of the sun.