‘The greatest skill that we learnt as undergraduates’ announced JS to the audience seated before her on rows of hard wooden chairs ‘Is how to write concisely. I can turn one person’s long-winded paragraph into three neat sentences – as can others in my class’.

She then cast a glance at me – at exactly the same time that my PhD students turned their heads in my direction.

Meanwhile JG nodded in agreement, as GCHQ employee KH and his daughter came to sit next to us.

Then JS set up the video to show us scenes from her recent holiday in France.