Wednesday’s Child: More Flesh by the Pound
I signed off last week’s post with the observation that rehabilitation – especially the posthumous kind – is a bribe that legality slips to justice, and since then I’ve read a little of the story of St. Joan of Arc, illustrating my point rather neatly. It may be remembered that, a quarter of a century after they had burned her at the stake in the marketplace at Rouen, the woman in question was exonerated on appeal by the Inquisitor General. A quarter of a century, it seems – in other words, a generation – is how long it usually takes,...



