Today we’re going to talk about the Bank of Hell, and also Dutch traffic lights. For the FT can now announce an intellectual breakthrough. Many publications offer readers a digest of the week’s news. This column offers a round-up of recent articles in the scholarly periodicals, and the chance to amaze your friends with your erudition.

For instance, among the interesting items you may have missed, Recusant Studies (A Journal of Research in Reformation and Post-Reformation Catholic History in the British Isles) covered the quatercentenary (in 2006) of the death from torture in the Tower of London of St Nicholas Owen, “master-builder of priest-holes”.