During the mid-1970s a Presbyterian boy growing up in a staunchly anti-Catholic family in Glasgow became the rather unlikely focus for a fervent stream of prayers in a small convent chapel in the English Midlands. If she had known about it, my future mother-in-law would have been utterly horrified (“But do we have to?” she asked, her face a picture of distaste, when the priest invited non-Catholics to go forward for a blessing at our wedding); and as to whether my prayers made any difference to my future husband’s welfare or happiness, I have no idea. Getting us to pray for the boys who would become our husbands was typical of the nuns at my idiosyncratic boarding school, where it often felt as though the clock had stopped around the time the school was founded shortly b