Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the only man convicted so far of the Lockerbie bombing, died a free man. His death came almost three years after the hilariously titled "Scottish Justice Secretary", Kenny MacAskill, proclaimed in a tear-filled speech that Megrahi must return to Tripoli because he had just three months left to live.

Perhaps it really was the case that this was the best that health professionals consulted by the Scots could manage. In which case the Libyan health service proved to be ten times better than Scotland's. 

But equally possibly the Scottish "government" made its deal for another reason. Scots used to have some backbone, but it will be remembered that MacAskill defended his decision to release the murderer of 270 people on Pan Am Flight 103 and in Lockerbie because the "defining characteristic" of "Scottish people" was their "humanity".

It was suggested that other people did not share this humanity; families of the American victims were portrayed in the UK media as uniquely vengeful. After Megrahi's death, Alex Salmond said, "The first thing we should remember is the victims of the Lockerbie atrocity." What a shame that he forgot them previously, using them instead for his petty nationalist ends. Americans will not, and should not, forget this.

***

On a final humid evening away from London, I take my favourite walk up Fifth Avenue. As I always try to do during busy days in New York, I turn off  into the Church of St Thomas. Evensong is in progress, and above the diminuendo roar of traffic I hear the strains of Kenneth Leighton's Collegium Magdalenae Oxoniense canticles. I drink it in from the back of the church and think about God and Philip Larkin. The Creed comes along and I head back into the traffic and eventually home.