Perhaps the most high-profile cli-fi author is Margaret Atwood, whose 2009 The Year of the Flood features survivors of a biological catastrophe also central to her 2003 novel Oryx and Crake, a book Atwood sometimes preferred to call speculative fiction.

Taking up the tongs, as if to arrange the wood, but rather perhaps to conceal his own confusion, the butler observed, “it was burning clear now, but had smoked woundily in the morning.”

The down Atlantic Coast Express, headed by Pacific No. 35020 Bibby Line, passes the scene of operations at a gingerly 10 m.p.h.

Pires, a three-time Cup winner with Arsenal who scored the Gunners' winner against Southampton in the 2003 final, has been a largely peripheral figure at Villa Park since joining in November - but the 37-year-old rolled back the years with a fine finish from Delfouneso's knockdown.