How do you make any sense of history, art or literature without knowing the stories and iconography of your own culture and all the world's main religions?

But the single overwhelming reason why jails are bursting is longer sentences given for more crimes.

Working lives are for the state to influence. Unemployment makes people unhappy. So does instability.

In the polls, over 80% support the right to die and have done for the last 25 years. Even 80% of practising Catholics and Protestants support it, plus 76% of Church Times readers.

The pens sharpen – Islamophobia! No such thing. Primitive Middle Eastern religions, and most others, are much the same – Islam, Christianity and Judaism all define themselves through disgust for women's bodies.

My mother begged doctors to end her life. She was beyond the physical ability to swallow enough of the weak morphine pills she had around her. When she knew she was dying I promised to make sure she could go at a time of her choosing, but it was impossible. I couldn't help.

So what really works? Treatments in jail do some good, but it's mostly too late: finding a family and a job or just growing older make most prisoners eventually give up crime.