Treasures in Heaven

With schools falling apart, teachers badly paid and pupils increasingly malnourished, connoisseurs of British values will no doubt rejoice that the Government has donated almost fifty million to the upkeep of some real estate erected to the glory of a genocidal Bronze Age djinn. Cathedrals and parish churches alike have humbly accepted grants for repairs and maintenance; doubtless while bearing in mind with all due piety both the Saviour's injunction to pray in private and His proclamation that two or three gathering in His name are a sufficient guarantee of His presence. In a superbly Anglican touch, the largest bung of all went to Leicester Cathedral, which is in the midst of a two-year, £15-million resurrection thanks in part to the recently re-interred relics of a rather worldly Roman Catholic.