Peter Rhodes on a forgotten hero, the downside of insulation and a glorious start to yuletide

So farewell, Chuck Yeager, the US war hero and test pilot who has died aged 97. In 1947 he became the first man to break the sound barrier. He was an American legend and we 1950s kids, raised on a diet of jet and rocket achievements, knew all about him. But we had our own heroes, too.

In March 1956 a British Fairey Delta 2 didn't merely break the world air speed record, then held by the Yanks, but shattered it by a margin of more than 300mph. The delta-wing plane was a product of world-leading British aviation and its pilot was also a war hero. His name was Peter Twiss and you've probably never heard of him. The Yanks remember their legends. We tend to forget ours.

The trouble with going green is that it can turn your bank account red. As the 2025 deadline approaches for banning gas boilers in new-build houses, there is much talk of hydrogen boilers and various heat pumps. The good news is that, in theory, we'll be able to heat our houses for virtually nothing. The bad news, for homeowners hoping to replace their old gas boiler with the zero-carbon equivalent, is that you'll only get clean, green and cheap heating after you've spent £10,000 or more on a new system.

But is there another drawback? Even the eager zero-carbon marketing people admit that for any system to work properly, your home must be super-insulated. And if the past year has taught us anything, it is that pandemics thrive where people share the same stale air. In the long run, might we be better off with draughts?

Although gas boilers will be banned from new homes from 2025, gas cookers will still be permitted. I foresee some scope for imaginative engineering. Don't be surprised if the home of the future has a gas cooker in the kitchen (which looks awfully like a boiler) connected to hotplates ( which look awfully like radiators) in all the rooms.

As for hydrogen home heating, have we yet shaken off the race-memory of the 1937 disaster when the hydrogen-filled airship Hindenburg exploded at New Jersey? I suspect older folk will fire up their hydrogen boilers nervously while thinking: “Oh, the humanity. . .”

When the wonderful series Dickensian was launched four years ago, the 20 episodes were scattered around the Beeb's schedules, making it hard to follow on a weekly basis. And if you missed one instalment of this fabulous concoction of characters from a host of different books by Charles Dickens, brought together in a single Christmassy whodunnit, you lost the thread. So well done, Auntie, for bringing it back on iPlayer. I binge-viewed the first three episodes a few nights ago. Ninety minutes have never flown by so quickly. What a show, what a cast, what a glorious start to the festive season.