lance

Stephen, recruited for his ability to provide the necessary tools, had produced a 100-tonne jack, explosives, and a thermal lance, which heats and melts steel with pressurized oxygen to create very high temperatures.

For them to catch fire, he says “it would take some spectacular lancing of the actual cells themselves, which would mean going through a very strong external structure”.

This week, an Israeli missile lanced through his house, killing the 23 people inside, including more than a dozen women and two children.

Tournaments began as rougher, less “gentlemanly” affairs in which competitors rode against each other with lances and then proceeded to fight with close-quarters weapons ahorse or on foot.

Even so, the cold lanced through, especially when it was windy.