Potatoes were the posthumous undoing of David Hume the philosopher. That was by way of argument. Today his name has been removed by diktat from a hideous building in George Square belonging to the University of Edinburgh. In Lawnmarket (where he was born in 1711) his statue so far survives, in its Roman dress baring a podgy Enlightenment breast to the breezes of the Old Town and frowning at the Bank of Scotland opposite. Someone has put a traffic cone on his head by way of a dunce’s hat.

You might think I’d be glad of Hume’s defenestration from the House of Fame. If not Mephistopheles, he was at least the Dr Faustus of aggressive atheism. In a slippery skein of contentions he declared miracles by their nature unbelievable, which would knock Christianity on the head, since its belief in the miracle of the Resurrection is fundamental.