Last week Roman Giertych, the Education Minister, announced that numerous classics of world literature (yes, m'lud, they are studied in schools in various countries) would be dumped in favour of well-approved, morally sound and, above all, Catholic writers.

Thus "the works of Goethe, Dostoyevsky, Kafka and the Polish-born Josef Conrad were to be dumped in favor of nationalist or Catholic authors like Henryk Sienkiewicz and the late Pope John Paul II. The aim was to instill patriotism in Polish youngsters."