Love him or loathe him, Calvin helped shaped the world we live in

Calvinism was important in that sense in forging the modern economy and contemporary society. By stressing God’s command to work, Calvinists encouraged the essential capitalist belief that secular success was also a religious imperative, and that idleness and dependency were sins

I’M always leaving things behind on trains and planes so I was rather pleased to be the beneficiary of someone else’s absentmindedness a couple of weeks ago.

It could only have happened in the North. Taking the train from Bangor to Belfast a couple of weeks ago, I rifled through the newspapers someone had left behind on the seat. Beneath the Belfast Telegraph and the Daily Telegraph lay a book he or she had accidentally forgotten to take with them. I picked it up but will happily return it if it’s yours.