Comment 1 by Aleatorica :

On seeing the headline, I thought for one terrible moment that someone had been strung up from a lamp-post for apostasy. But no, it's only Richard Dawkins being called 'strident' again. How terrible for him. What brutality!

Richard has been subjected to far worse and laughs it off with good grace.

My distinguished colleague Mary Ann Sieghart, who at least has met him, described Dawkins yesterday as "puffed-up, self-regarding, vain, prickly and militant".

It must be a different Richard Dawkins or perhaps she bumped into Ian Paisley by mistake (She allegedly suffers from the medical condition prosopagnosia).

I have met Richard, purely by coincidence in the Fellows restaurant in the basement of the Royal Society in London. I invited him over to my table and he accepted, (he could have chosen not to the place was 3 parts empty) sat down and we talked throughout lunch over so many things and he was more interested in talking about what I was doing than his own work. We even shared a mutual delight for the craft of the blacksmith. I’m an engineer, I’m not a leading academic or renowned for anything in particular and I’m definitely not a nosy, abrasive journalist with an agenda for a coup. My memory of him is of a man who is engaging, polite, keen to listen and easy of address to the point that you felt you had known him for years rather than just having met him without introduction. Richard may remember this and I hope I didn’t give him indigestion.