The Tablet can never have had a foreign affairs editor quite like Christopher Herdon. He had a distinguished record in the Foreign Office before taking early retirement and working for the paper.

On the lavatory wall of his house near Petworth in Sussex hung a framed tribute to his bravery when joining in the defence of the British Embassy in Baghdad in 1958. “During the attack by the mob,” testified the letter from the Foreign Office, “your devotion to duty and disregard of your own safety were beyond praise.”