Not long ago, I decided that the time had come for me to find out something about King Herod, whose name was familiar to me, but about whom I knew next to nothing. My investigations were sparked by a little cousin, then aged about four, who tried unsuccessfully to get her tongue round my name but gave up and settled instead for ‘Herod’. This made me anxious to discover whether or not the said Herod was a worthy namesake.

En passant, I remember teachers at my primary school asking us for our Christian names, regardless of religious affiliation. This never troubled me, because I had to other first names up my sleeve, both unquestionably Jewish. One was my Yiddish name, Hirsche, seldom used except by doting elderly relatives, the other, its Hebrew equivalent, Zwi, mainly reserved for solemn occasions like my Barmitzvah.

Actually, I was quite fond of my so-called Christian name. It gave me an affinity with Harold the Last of the Saxon Kings, who was allegedly shot in the eye with an arrow at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, a scene which I frequently drew, making sure that my hero’s face was liberally daubed with red ink.

But I digress. Back to the Herod of biblical times. Thanks to my exposure to a couple of Nativity plays, I gathered that he had lived around the time of Christ and that he was a bad sort,........

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