Ahead the flanks of the Pennines gleamed faintly in the moonlight, looking as though they themselves were part of some dry and deserted lunar landscape.

Since the mid-1980s, when Indonesia first began to clear its bountiful forests on an industrial scale in favour of lucrative palm-oil plantations, “haze” has become an almost annual occurrence in South-East Asia. The cheapest way to clear logged woodland is to burn it, producing an acrid cloud of foul white smoke that, carried by the wind, can cover hundreds, or even thousands, of square miles.

BRONZE SPEAR-HEADS. In Floor Case, South Side of First Floor. [The spear-heads of bronze, which, like the socketed axes, belong to a time when casting over a core was practised, are often very fine examples of the founder's art.

And it came to pass, when he had made an end to speaking unto Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.