• “STARMER’s sausages” would surely be a big money-spinner and no doubt some sharp entrepreneur is already slaughtering the requisite livestock to create a brand which will undoubtedly help “grow the economy”.

But before there’s a rush to copyright, I should warn that as a classics schoolboy in the 1960s reading Julius Caesar’s Gallic Wars, my “humorous” teacher would routinely translate the Latin word “obsides” as “sausages”.

Of course, it actually means “hostages” and obsides thereafter became our word for those often dubious delicacies. Perhaps Sir Keir is a sausage to a classical education?

H HANNAH
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