Glissando  More accurately, glissssaaaaando. The sound of Prince Charles sliding and gliding around his words as he has been obliged to step around the everlasting presence of his mother, our Queen. Bending, benighted, bewildered.

Good Life  U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden, on the podium at the Munich ‘peace conference’, pink-cheeked and aglow with the good life. Never has losing looked so healthy – losing ground to Russia’s Putin, giving ground to France and Germany, gaining ground in health and wellbeing. (Perhaps not the best-ever trade off.)

Good to talk Not caged before burning like the Jordanian pilot murdered by IS, condemned prisoners of Britain’s forgotten religious wars were staked to the ground and consumed by fire (Thomas Cranmer), or drowned in a rising tide of seawater (Wigtown Martyrs). Between two sets of victims, Tudor and Stuart, Shakespeare found a form of words for opposing interests: his Globe, London’s first public sphere. Even now we can hear his joy in staging conflicts in blank verse instead of grisly executions; also his recurring fear of the world struck dumb again, condemned to death screams instead of humanising dialogue.