It was all Guy Fawkes and fireworks last night but where were the left-footed plotters? Influential Catholic scribes met in the Athenaeum Club in Pall Mall to celebrate The Train in Spain, Ten Great Journeys Through the Interior, by the Daily Telegraph’s religious columnist Christopher Howse.
“This is not the Spanish Inquisition,” explained the woolly-bearded Howse, who lives in the shadow of Westminster Cathedral. “It’s just that I and a lot of my friends are Catholics.
I went to Spain because I wanted to be familiar with another culture. Anyway, the Spanish Inquisition were very nice people. They offered much fairer trials than anyone else.”
Tell that to Monty Python. Among the papists drinking Spanish bubbly were novelist Piers Paul Read, poet P J Kavanagh, journalist Daniel Johnson and former top spook
Sir Mark Allen of MI6. “You can say what you like about us,” said Dr James Le Fanu. “We Catholics love to be persecuted.”
