Françoise Schell looked pleased. ‘See, didn’t I guess you were the type? Well, if you were there, then you don’t need me to tell you how little has changed for these lunatics. They’re basically still living in the seventh century and, given the chance, will carry on exactly as always. As the Islamic State gained territory and occupied cities throughout the Middle East, killing and beheading as they went, they blew up every ancient church and synagogue they could find, as part of the same old attempt to erase Christian and Jewish heritage from history. The list includes the destruction of the Nineveh Wall in Mosul in 2015, and the lovely video footage they took of themselves merrily wrecking the Mosul museum the same year. The bulldozing of the ancient Assyrian relics of Raqqa. The attack on the ancient city of Palmyra, and all the irreplaceable art treasures they broke up there with sledgehammers. Not to mention the attacks on Shi’ite mosques like the Askariya Shrine in Iraq, or the Muslim shrines of Timbuktu that the Islamic Ansar Dine terror group were so keen to smash to bits in 2012, because the militant Sunnis despise the Shi’ites almost as much as they despise the Jews and Christians. There’s more, much more. The scale and atrocity of the vandalism are simply unbelievable. Even without taking into account the appalling bloodshed and human misery inflicted over fourteen hundred years, it’s without a doubt the worst litany of wanton destructiveness ever committed in the history of the world.’

Ben had the impression that she could talk about this all day, impassioned as she was.

She said, ‘But somewhere along the line, something changed. The terrorists, whose leaders aren’t completely stupid, finally started cottoning on to the fact that these things they were smashing to pieces might seem worthless and idolatrous to them, but a lot of other people in the world actually regarded them as being rather valuable. That’s when they turned from simply destroying ancient art treasures to trading in them. Having bombed the crap out of a place they’d begin excavating the ruins to see what stuff they could salvage and put on the black market. After their destruction of the four-thousand-year-old Assyrian city of Tel Ajaja in Syria, 2016, it’s estimated that they hauled away at least forty per cent of the relics to sell off.’

‘I hadn’t realised it was such an orchestrated business.’