I sometimes think that the Devil lives in Islington and reads the Tablet

she announced shortly before she died.

‘But I may be doing him an injustice.’ She would have been pleased to know that her obituary in the Tablet this week was short and mean-spirited. In fact, Anna lived in a part of Camden every bit as right-on as Islington. She was a conservative in Bohemia. Like James Lees-Milne, she had converted to Catholicism only to discover that Mother Church was just about to dismantle her glorious heritage with Zwinglian zeal. Unlike Lees-Milne, who scuttled back to Anglican Choral Matins, she stayed and fought her corner. It was a messy, prolonged and (for her admirers) enjoyable battle. Here is a much abbreviated list of things that Anna disliked about the modern Catholic Church: the ineptly translated English Mass; the ‘sign of peace’; nuns who wore Crimplene instead of burka-like habits; lay people strutting about the sanctuary; the word ‘empowering’; folk hymns; and the Most Revd Derek Worlock, Archbishop of Liverpool. "