Yesterday was the day of our monthly pro-life prayer vigil outside our local hospital. I held up two placards. One had the words “Have Mercy on the Unborn” on it; the other, “Life is a gift.” This latter statement, so foundational for all who believe in a loving Creator God, so simple and yet so profound, is often forgotten by those who govern our country, as well as by the Opposition parties.

I was reminded of it in another context when reading The House of the Dead: Siberian Exile under the Tsars by Daniel Beer. Beer relates the case of the 28-year-old writer, Fyodor Dostoevsky, who was convicted at the end of 1849, along with other young St Petersburg intellectuals, of membership of a subversive discussion group i.e. one that criticised the institution of serfdom and hoped for political reform. Sentenced to death by firing squad and lining up in the prison courtyard just minutes from execution, the writer and his companions were granted a last-minute reprieve from the Tsar, Nicholas I. Instead, Dostoevsky was sentenced to four years penal labour in Omsk, Siberia.