Sam Kinchin-Smith

Melanie McDonagh wrote in the Spectator on Saturday that she wanted Theresa May to be prime minister 'because she’s a vicar’s daughter’. The Mail made a similar point in its Gove-crushing endorsement a week earlier: ‘A vicar’s daughter, she is not a member of the privileged classes, but had to make her own way in the world.’ Publications in Germany and the United States have been quick to point out that this is something May has in common with Angela Merkel – while a few closer to home have wondered whether Gordon Brown, the son of a Church of Scotland minister, is the more relevant comparison. I’m a vicar’s son.

The common nightingale shows up in the south-east of England in April and is gone by early June. The BBC’s first live outside broadcast, in May 1924, saw Elgar’s favourite cellist, Beatrice Harrison, duet with a nightingale in her back garden.