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Hello, I'm Sam Holmes and welcome to Spectator Out Loud. Every week, a few of our favourite writers read their pieces from the latest issue.

This week, we'll hear from Christopher House on the destruction of Ukrainian churches,

Richard Florida, on how COVID has changed London, for the better,

and Olivia Potts on her love of the crisp sandwich.

First up, Christopher House.

Unholy War.

The destruction of Ukraine's churches.

One small, deadly incident in the Ukrainian war proved memorable because it involved the ordinary things of life.

A mother and two children trying to leave the town of Irpin on foot on the 6th of March, died from Russian shelling. Their suitcases fell beside them, and miserably a pet dog carrier.

They lay on an ordinary road that could be in Surrey on the steps of a memorial to Soviet dead from the Second World War.

That spot is opposite a little row of bells under a tiled roof in the grounds of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of St. George.

A neat hoarding was visible in 2015 on the building next to the modest unfinished church,

showing what it would look like when the five domes were roofed and gilded.

Footage of the explosion that killed the family shows the completed domes gleaming in the sunshine,

the building behind the hoarding still intact and the conifers in its garden not yet turned into spent matches.

The windows of St George's were soon smashed and its parish centre was destroyed.

The bombardment of the town continued for days.

The destruction of churches in Ukraine matters.

Russia's disgusting strategy of pounding cities with artillery is intended to make

inhabitants' lives unbearable, and part of that life is the familiar surroundings

of streets and old places of worship.

...