12 weeks for 12 pounds.

Subscribe to The Spectator for this excellent deal and get a 20 pound Amazon voucher at www.

www.combe.

Foursleash voucher.

Welcome to Holy Smoke, the Spectator's Religion podcast. I'm Damien Thompson. My guest today is a member of a family that has at various times ruled Austria, Hungary, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Burgundy, large parts of Italy, Croatia, Bosnia, Southern Poland and Mexico. You will have

guessed from that that his surname can only be Habsburg, and it is. Edward Habsburg is

is Hungary's ambassador to the Holy See, and I know him as do many people through Twitter.

Edward, whose family title is Archduke Edward of Austria,

is also an unofficial online ambassador for his Catholic faith.

His Twitter feed is more uplifting and funny than that of any bishop I can think of.

He writes as he says to show the world that Catholics are not sad, prudish and

world fleeing weirdos. Well, at the moment I think the jury is out on that particular question,

but he's certainly proved that he isn't. I'm just looking at his tweets now and I see that

he's got a thread up on the growing beard of Franz Joseph.

That's his great-great-grandfather, the Emperor Franz Joseph,

which catalogs in paintings how the emperor's whiskers gradually joined forces with his moustache.

To culminate in, says Edward,

a final stage in which Franz Joseph could stare down Jason Robards in once upon a time in the West.

And there are pictures of the two men to prove the point.

The cinematic reference is typical, though sadly the zombie movie that Edward wrote never went into production.

He is, however, the author of two short books on James Bond

and Harry Potter. Other running themes are, as you might expect, the spectacular success

...