• The other main form of diacope is the elaboration, where you chuck in an adjective. From sea to shining sea. Sunday bloody Sunday. O Captain! My Captain! Human, all too human. From harmony, from heavenly harmony … or Beauty, real beauty, ends where intellectual expression begins.

• The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold

• The best-known example in English is The Pilgrim’s Progress, where a chap subtly named Christian meets a giant called Despair (and his wife, Diffidence) and gets bogged down in symbolic bogs and climbs a hill called Difficulty and so on and so forth until any sensible person is bored to tears.

• After all, the Ancient Romans worshipped Love (Venus) and War (Mars) and ironmongery (Vulcan), and it’s not entirely clear to what extent they were personifications or gods or both and neither. It probably depended on the Ancient Roman.

• And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. Matthew 19, verse 24

• In War: Resolution. In Defeat: Defiance. In Victory: Magnanimity. In Peace: Good Will.