In order to exorcise this she-devil, the attendants made circles on the walls with charcoal, within each was written: Adam, Eve, Lilas, avaunt!

He that is surety for a stranger shall smart for it: and he that hateth suretiship is sure.

Once goblinized , Herodias joins them , doomed still to bear about the Baptist's head

There is a familiar pattern that has come to define Theresa May's premiership. Encouraging rhetoric gets periodically wheeled out: the pledges to ease the burden on the just about managing; the promises to fight the burning injustices of social inequality. But then a few weeks later, the chancellor gets up at the dispatch box to deliver a budget or an autumn statement and it's as if those words had never been uttered.