Another source of discord was the return, as a Palace employee, of Iain Moody, whose sacking as Cardiff's head of recruitment brought to a head the fallout between Malky Mackay and Vincent Tan to a head.
Iain Mansfield, the director of trade and investment at the UK embassy in Manila, who declared that a British exit from the EU would free the City from "European interference", received his prize from the former chancellor Lord Lawson.
Douglas Alexander, who managed David Miliband's campaign, has been given the key task of shadowing the welfare plans being drawn up by Iain Duncan Smith.
Iain Gray, the former Scottish Labour leader who fought and lost the 2010 Scottish election, has been moved from finance to shadow education secretary.
In a pub conversation in the autumn of 2012, long before he had any warning of his illness, Iain Banks told me that he wanted to see his poems published together with mine.
The teenage Iain of course had no personal experience of violence, let alone war, but his father and many of his older relatives were veterans, and he was already an avid reader of history and much else.
But lyrics too remained an influence and inspiration: Iain was endlessly and avowedly awed by the invention and verbal wit of Clive James's songwriting with Pete Atkins.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies today produced for the public the same sort of menu of pain that civil servants are now dropping on to Iain Duncan Smith's desk at the Department for Work and Pensions.
