* Jews have in fact outperformed Protestants in the United States over the past century, with significantly higher earnings and rates of self-employment. Of the chief executive officers of Fortune magazine’s 100 largest companies in 2003, at least 10 per cent were Jews as were no fewer than 23 per cent of CEOs of the Forbes 400. Not only have Jews been disproportionately successful in starting financial firms; they were also founders or co-founders of some of the world’s biggest technology companies, for example Dell, Google, Intel and Oracle.

* These transatlantic differences are smaller than used to be the case, however. Unemployment has risen much higher in the United States than in most of the European Union as a result of the financial crisis; within the OECD, at the time of writing, only Hungary, Ireland, Portugal, Slovakia and Spain have a higher jobless rate than the US. Measured as a five-year (1996–2000) average of days not worked due to strike action per 1,000 employees, Denmark, Spain, Ireland, Italy and France are all more strike-prone than the United States, but the other members of the European Union are less so.

* The song was later covered by the British singer, record producer and convicted paedophile Jonathan King (Charterhouse and Trinity, Cambridge), also noteworthy for having produced ‘Leap Up and Down (Wave your Knickers in the Air)’ and the original cast album of The Rocky Horror Show.

* Even at the real Woodstock, the Who had premiered parts of Tommy, Pete Townsend’s rock opera about a deaf, dumb and blind messiah.

* Chiang had converted to Christianity in 1930. His wife was one of the daughters of the Methodist millionaire Charlie Soong. I have used the more familiar Wade-Giles form of his name and also of Sun Yat-sen’s (pinyin: Jiang Jeshi and Sūn Yixiān).

* Comparable organizations in the United States include the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Muslim American Society (MAS). There are also American branches of the Muslim World League and the World Assembly of Muslim Youth.