Edoardo Albert has done a magnificent job of giving us men of flesh, blood, and bone. The Northumbrian Thrones trilogy is a historical and literary achievement.

The Twelvetide is an open gate to benevolent magic, to mages and faeries, a time in which we may recognize what is exalted, as the wise men did, by exchanging gifts and thereby seeing exaltation in each other.

I promised myself that I would ignore the global panic that has taken the world over (one might say it has ‘gone viral’) and substituted itself for every other known psycho-pathology. But the U-turn by the international commentariat was too much of a gift to satire to be missed.

On January 5th, 6,000 German Catholics sent a petition to Pope Francis to express their opposition to the “synodal path” taken by the German Bishops’ Conference.

The embattled ex-chancellor took to Twitter, saying he was “honored to join the European Council on Tolerance and Reconciliation as co-chairman together with Tony Blair!”