One can go even further and remark that it is in the infancy stories, just where the humanity of the Messiah appears, that Luke picks up the veterotestamentary themes of the actual presence and the voice of God and applies them to Jesus.

Since the mid-1980s, when Indonesia first began to clear its bountiful forests on an industrial scale in favour of lucrative palm-oil plantations, “haze” has become an almost annual occurrence in South-East Asia. The cheapest way to clear logged woodland is to burn it, producing an acrid cloud of foul white smoke that, carried by the wind, can cover hundreds, or even thousands, of square miles.

Some of the people I talked to said it could be done—but it would cost big money. More grease than I’d ever dreamed of.

After his last two projects failed, he was really behind the eight-ball.