Tomorrow’s Church Times, I hear, has a report from Lambeth Palace Library where staff are working through a collection of books retrieved from the attic of a former staff member. “They thought that about 60 volumes had gone missing. They found 1400.”

Your experiences may differ, but I find there’s something one can’t help admiring about the sheer scale of this (presumed) crime. Did the borrower in question slip out one book every day for five years? Or did they take cartloads out of the door now and again in a trolley, with some plausible excuse about them needing some fresh air?

Or did they spend weeks planning the self-adminstered loan of a favourite volume of Barrowist ecclesiology, nervously smuggle it out under a cardie, then think, “That was easy. I might as well take the lot”?

I do hope we find out.