The metarocle is culture correspondent and a senior editor at The Economist. He'd learnt early on about putting a hand up to volunteer for a job, or stretching one out to a fellow human being. But he never forgot the unending stream of beggars, itinerant preachers who would come to their door. In his biography, he wrote, the cheese would be sliced thinner, the soup stretched with water. Sometimes they had to dig up tulip bugs from the garden and eat them like potatoes but no guest was ever turned away.