The so-called Night of the Broken Glass, which the Hitler government represented as a spontaneous irruption of anger, was a cynical and carefully choreographed attack on Germany’s Jewish population with the aim of demoralising them and despoiling them of their possessions.

Whatever about questions of mandate or democratic legitimacy, the bravery of the insurgents who fought in 1916, and of those who were executed for their role as leaders of the Rising, is beyond dispute.

As we try to recover from the bubble and bust we might ask whether we as a nation take more risks than others, or to what extent gambling is an entrenched characteristic of the Irish.

Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI, is best seen not as a renegade liberal but as a sympathiser with a very different movement, which sought to break the grip of Thomism and return to the early sources of the Church.