The then assistant editor recalls how this paper covered one of the defining moments in the history of the Church since it was first published in 1840 – the Second Vatican Council Douglas Woodruff, who had been editor of The Tablet since 1936 when he and Tom Burns took it over from the Archdiocese of Westminster and restored it to lay ownership, was in many ways ideally suited to guide the paper through the Second Vatican Council. He was, basically, an historian (and I never checked with him, but I think he might have relished the “an”), someone who could be regarded as having adapted to journalism Leopold von Ranke’s memorable description of the historian’s task being to record the past “wie es eigentlich gewesen” – “as it really was