As you will know, if you take a passing interest in my blog, I have been mining my back catalogue quite a lot, largely because many newer readers won’t have seen these posts before and, in my over-estimated view of their value, I think they are worth sharing again for that newer audience. I rely on an app called Timehop for this – if you don’t know it, you link your various social media streams to it and it kindly gives you an ‘on this day’ view of them. I was slightly taken aback to see that I have posted on this day for each of the past three years: twice in response to terrorist attacks, and once for one of the daily prompts provided by WordPress, back in the days when they were of more interest to me than of late.

Sadly, there is news today of another lone attacker killing four people in Trèbes, in France, apparently in the name of Islamic State. I’m taking the unusual – some might say excessive – step of reposting all three of these posts, in reverse chronological order. This, from last year, is in response to the attacks in London and, as I said in the piece, it drew on what I had said the previous year. Apologies for the repetition, but the underlying message I wanted to get across – then and now – is that we cannot let these people win. In whatever context, good must always triumph over evil.