Deborah Friedell

Tom Sawyer cheats to win a Bible that he doesn’t want. He pretends to have memorised two thousand verses of the New Testament so that he can appear ‘great and conspicuous’. He’s undone when he’s asked to name the first two disciples. When Donald Trump said that the Bible was his favourite book, and then was asked by a reporter to name his favourite verse, he couldn’t lose because he refused to play: ‘I wouldn’t want to get into it because to me that’s very personal. You know, when I talk about the Bible it’s very personal.’

My mother​ once worked for a large American chemical corporation. When it made her an executive, all the usual things happened: she got a bigger office, and share options. She was no longer allowed to travel with more than a few other senior employees, to minimise the loss to the company if the plane went down. And among her new responsibilities, she was ‘invited’ to have...

When​ Ray Nagin, the mayor of New Orleans, ordered the city to evacuate for Hurricane Katrina on 28 August 2005, two days later than he should have, he exempted hospital staff. There were 2500 patients in hospitals and nursing homes, and no plan for getting them out. Memorial Medical Center had 238 patients, some of them moved there from another hospital, which had been considered less...