‘WHAT? By giving up its lone outer electron, a sodium atom achieves a desirable quantum mechanical configuration and is left with a positive charge. By accepting an extra electron, chlorine fills its eight electrons and gains a negative charge. The charged ions are then held together to make molecules and crystals of common salt (NaCl) by electrostatic forces… Lassie, are you absolutely sure that’s what the professor told you?’
The recent commemorations surrounding the 150th anniversary of John Buchan’s birth – not least in The Spectator – have stirred up literary memories for me. Not of Buchan or his work particularly, I was a little too old for the glaring coincidences of The Thirty-Nine Steps when I read it in my twenties, but of
