Started reading Matt Ridley’s new book, Innovation, and can’t stop. So gripping, it’s hard to pause even to write this appreciation. Master story-teller. Fascinating, well-researched historical tales light up his thesis that innovations are not sparks of genius but evolve.

The full title is "How Innovation Works – and why it flourishes in freedom". Possibly the subtitle will seem to sit uneasily with – or resonate with – your politics. All the more reason to read the book itself. To do so will be a pleasure in any case.

“Clergymen forbade their parishioners from eating potatoes in England as late as the early 18th century, for the magnificently stupid reason that they are not mentioned in the Bible. Somehow . . . the English turned this into a belief that potatoes were Roman Catholic agents.”