The trial that opened this week in Paris of 20 men charged in connection with the terrorist attacks in 2015 that left 130 people dead and another five hundred injured, took place on a day that for me would otherwise have been notable mainly because of a lunch I had enjoyed with the Observer correspondent Kim Willsher.

Jephtha at the ROH: compromise is not in Oliver Mears’s dictionary
In the closing moments, Mears delivered a coup de théâ which left his audience visibly shaken.