Banking supervision teams at the Bank of England “now receive the equivalent of twice the entire works of Shakespeare of reading each week”. So says Huw van Steenis, the author of a new report “Future of Finance” commissioned by the BoE’s outgoing governor, Mark Carney.

One might argue with the word “equivalent”. Few regulatory submissions rival the Bard’s output in their timelessness or vivid use of language: the Bank of England would probably send them winging straight back to their originators if they did.