So I went and got satellite TV, just in time to watch MPs vote—live, on the Parliament Channel!—for the biggest strategic mistake any Prime Minister has made since 1938. It was the expected result, but it didn’t seem quite real until the results were announced on the floor of the House. It was the defeat of the anti-war amendment that sealed it, of course: after that, the passage of the Government motion was a formality. The really striking thing, once the vote for war had finally been carried, was the silence. For a few moments, before the Speaker called for adjournment and everybody buggered off, the MPs sat more quietly than I’ve ever seen them. They may have got it wrong, but there’s no denying they were struck by the weight of their decision.

Maybe it’s because I’ve started learning Anglo-Saxon, but I now really see where Tolkien was coming from. There’s comfort in hearing the voices of people who lived a millennium ago, speaking a language at once alien and deeply familiar, struggling with their own darkness and trying, however haltingly and fumblingly, to create a better world. It doesn’t provide an escape from his feeling of being shut in by the well-meaning servants of monstrous forces, but it does at least give a glimpse of the horizon through the window-bars.

Eala, hu gese6lig seo forme eld was feises middangeardes