Well, maybe not literally, but I am very heartened by Keir Starmer’s proposal to do away with the House of Lords – a totally corrupt peerage system which costs us a fortune! I hope all the iniquities will be exposed in the debates.

It’s a great shame that by the time the Streng Verboten order was lifted, it was too late for the king to go. Is populism anti-monarchy? Obviously it’s anti-environmental.

At the risk of sounding flippant, I like to think that the current, and immediately previous, PM preventing the King from attending COP27 could be a form of treason. Preventing the man who has been unjustly reviled for so long, for his foresight on the matter of climate change, from attending this important event intended to save the planet and its inhabitants, not just individual countries, from a most difficult future – is an astounding act of ignorant short-sightedness and lack of care for the children and grandchildren of their own as well as everyone else’s.

Perhaps a virtual gunpowder plot please, in the form of a general election, could blow up this incompetent government (but not the King) and hopefully allow a more intelligent government to take over.

Thank you John for your comments brought up by your reading of John le Carre’s letters, most interesting. I read Adam Sisman’s biography of le Carre when it came out, and almost immediately afterwards “The Pigeon Tunnel”, le Carre’s reposte to Sisman. Then I was lucky enough to hear Sisman talking about his book, clearly upset,it seemed to me, by le Carre feeling he had to come out so soon with his own version of his own life. An intriguing tension between a biographer and his highly literate subject.

Thanks for this, John. I do love a moral compass and wish that our MPs had one; perhaps they might be given one for Christmas.

Philby is an interesting case in point; he supported internationalism as opposed to nationalism. He did know it was treachery and he did know the consequences for him, if caught; but, as you say, he felt he was serving a higher purpose. What we are looking at with COP27 is a last-ditch attempt to get nation states to act in the interests of the whole world, not of their own particular patch of it.

Protestantism is the religion of nationalism in the West; a major thrust at the start was its violent opposition to the supra-nationalism of Catholicism. I was brought up as a Strict Baptist believing that my moral compass was much shinier than most other people’s; it’s quite a difficult kind of arrogance to shake off!

Both Protestant and Catholic fanatics were equally zealous, Lyn, in my opinion. Are you on Facebook? I’ve posted some longer pieces (written by other writers) on the Huguenot Jo Facebook page. Lots of intriguing facts there.

Imagine if they had succeeded! All the lords, the king, I believe quite a few of the royal family, all the MPs – all up in smoke!

And that they were betrayed by trying to save friend. But yes..they were religious fanatics.

https://artuk.org/

Yes, the Monteagle letter gave the game away. It always seems a sad story to me, because of course the plotters were religious fanatics, fully convinced that their cause was just. To be betrayed by a piece of paper!

The paintings are not part of the exhibition, but are part of the Art UK collection of pictures. I was very struck by their beauty.