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Hello and welcome to Spectator Out Loud. Each week we choose some of our favourite articles from the magazine and ask their writers to read them aloud. I'm Patrick Gibbons and on this week's podcast.

As cardinals gather in Rome for the funeral of Pope Francis and the upcoming papal conclave,

Owen Matthews reads his letter from Rome.

Matthew Paris takes us through his travels across the Channel Islands.

Marcus Nevit reviews Minou Din Shores Friends in Youth,

choosing sides in the English Civil War,

and looks at the relationship between Bolstrowde Whitelock and Edward Hyde, once close colleagues who fell out once they had to take sides.

As a new podcast on Marco Pierre White drops, entitled Eat Me, Angus Colwell opens up about his obsession for the chef, accompanied by his favourite clips.

And finally, Sean Thomas agrees that all history may be the result of our desire to avoid

on we as he provides his notes on boredom. Up first, Owen Matthews.

Ordinary Romans, famous for their cheerful working class familiarity, loved Pope Francis for his common touch.

For the first time in living memory, they will have an opportunity of turning out on the streets

to say their final farewells to a Pope, as Francis willed that he will be buried in the papal

basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore on the Esquilino Hill, rather than in the vaults of St. Peter's.

His will be the first papal burial procession to the Basilica since Clement 9th in 1669.

Unlike his predecessors, though, Francis insisted on plainness, economy and simplicity.

His first arrival in the Vatican's Pope was by public bus. His departure

in a plain wooden coffin is likely to be equally low-key and dignified. The mortal Pope dies,

...