A friend showed me round a Freemason's lodge the other day. It was a grand building in a Northern UK city. I was struck by how old fashioned it seemed - there was an air of faded grandeur about it - a feeling that this had once been an important and influential place, but no longer. Plaques on the walls commerated the fallen in the Great Wars of the Twentieth Century and forgotten aristocrats and notables.

I'm sure many of these people were fine, brave people who did great works - and some of them may have been dubious characters who did dodgy deals. Nevertheless, I can't help thinking that the days when Freemasons were a force in the land are over.