Banned from Twitter for a week! My crime? Violent speech, which consisted of pointing out that someone who died from a heart attack looked like a man who was going to have a heart attack. Freedom of Speech, eh, Musky?

A propos of nothing at all, does the expression “no-mark”, meaning an unimportant person, derive from a mis-interpretation of “nomarch”, an ancient Egyptian word for someone in charge of a nome (province)?

For many readers of a certain age, the joy of the new “John Le Carre” novel is not any intrinsic merit, more the arrival of familiar faces. There’s Bernard Hepton, Ian Richardson, Beryl Reid, and, best of all, held off until halfway through, Michael Jayston. Old friends, all welcome.