A salient lesson from the tale of the Cat and the Lord

Gloomy just at present, isn't it? Downturn and disruption all around, winter coming in, grim and dark, most of the country stuck in traffic, the failure of Diana, Princess of Wales, to be voted the Greatest Great Briton, the cricket; no wonder large amounts of the population are expressing near terminal disaffection with this country in various and assorted surveys.

Time, then, perhaps, to draw inspiration from our past, when the enemies amounted to something rather more substantial than ennui, falling investments and shortened traffic-light sequences. We would refer you to one of the documents just released by the Public Records Office: that which concerns the attempt by Mathilde Carre, the "voluptuous" and "sultry" French triple agent known as "the Cat", to seduce Lord Selbourne, head of the Special Operations Executive in 1942.

There was certainly a dalliance between them, but it appears not to have led to anything more serious, including the loss of secrets. And the key to the Cat's failure lay in her own estimation of Selbourne, that he had all the attributes she admired, except that he couldn't dance.

Couldn't dance: indeed, the much-mocked unease of the British male when challenged to cope with music, movement and a female simultaneously. But it was enough to thwart the Cat, and provides proof once again of our unrivalled ability to convert weaknesses into strengths. Imagine, to take just one other example, how many times we might have been invaded if the food had been any good.