Friends and colleagues of the distinguished lawyer Sir Louis Blom-Cooper will have been puzzled by the opening sentence of his recent obituary in the Times: “Louis Blom-Cooper paid the penalty for being too clever and too Catholic in his passions.” Clever he may have been, but Sir Louis was never a Catholic – as the Times was forced to recognise the following day when they apologised for the capital C. Yet it was not this little error that caused me to do something I have hardly ever done – write a letter to the Times (needless to say the letter was not printed).