Pope Francis I (Getty Images)
He could not have been more open about his disdain for unfettered, Wild West capitalism, or more public about his paramount commitment to the needs of the poor. Swapping the papal Mercedes in favour of a Ford Focus, the gaudy red shoes for plain black ones, and the grandeur of the Apostolic Palace for a modest two-bedroom apartment, he was even rumoured to be slipping unnoticed out of the Vatican at night to tend to the homeless of Rome.
Around the globe, those of all faiths and of none were smitten with His Holiness, the former Irish president Mary McAleese telling a journalist that 'even the 'kick the Pope' Orangemen of Northern Island love Pope Francis'.
Lady Thatcher (Rex Features)
Whether that implacable cold warrior and resolute free marketeer Lady Thatcher would have shared the besottedness for the first pontiff to deny being a Marxist, we can only speculate. She too revered the teachings of St Francis of Assisi, which might have provided some common ground had they met. But a month after the papal election, the Baroness passed away after years of poor health. In death, she inevitably remained a polarising force. Regardless of the Franciscan line about replacing discord with harmony that she recited on entering Downing Street in 1979, this is how one imagines she would have liked it.
The denunciations were far scarcer than the eulogies. Glenda Jackson was the solitary Labour MP to attack her memory during the House of Commons tribute, while protesters outside her St Paul's funeral remained mostly respectful.
The time-honoured doctrinal row about whether Thatcher's lasting influence on Britain was fully benign revived, but on one thing everybody from the post-Thatcherite right to the neo-Bennite left could and did agree. No peacetime leader in centuries, if ever, altered the direction of this country, and even perhaps the national DNA, like the force of nature who was born above a corner shop in Grantham, blew away British industrial decline like a tornado, and died in a suite at the Ritz. Whatever our political sensibilities, as the recovered stroke victim Andrew Marr observed in his Modern History of Britain, we are all of us Thatcher's Children now.
Less perhaps in honour of her memory than yielding to the demands of expediency, David Cameron rediscovered some latent Thatcherite instincts of his own. With Ukip still attracting an alarming percentage of natural Tory voters, and spooked by the rage of traditional Conservatives at his championing of the same sex marriage legislation, the Prime Minister tacked noticeably to the right as 2013 drew on.
The pressure to defang Nigel Farage, whose appeal seemed impervious to the more outre´ statements from Godfrey Bloom and other blunt-speaking irregulars, led to tougher talk on Europe and immigration. Deciding whether shoring up the core vote is more or less crucial to his chances in 2015 than alienating floating voters by vacating the centre ground remained a troublesome calculation.
Partly perhaps because the PM was wobbling now and then on that fraying tightrope, and despite the gratifying pace of the economic recovery, it was the Leader of the Opposition who seemed more in control of the political agenda than the PM - and never more so than with the theatrical pledge to freeze energy bills in an assured party conference speech.
He had his troubles with Unite, Ed Balls and Damian McBride's beautifully written book, while the majority understandably continue to find it a challenge to conjure the mental image of Ed Miliband waving from the steps of No 10 without an involuntary snort of derision.
He still resembles an auditioner for the title role in the stage play about Adrian Mole struggling to adapt to middle age, and always will. But for all his presentational problems, it was Miliband who led the Commons to flex the muscle that had atrophied under New Labour, but has happily revived since, by voting to stop Mr Cameron launching hastily conceived air strikes against President Assad's forces in Syria after the alleged use of chemical weapons against his own people.
Ed Miliband (Reuters)
Whether by luck or design, Miliband captured the extreme national fatigue with blundering military adventurism in Muslim lands, and in the process rewrote British foreign policy (and effectively that of the United States, where the President hurriedly abandoned his own plans for a Syrian intervention) for the short term at least.
Meanwhile, his brother David followed the Louise Mensch from Parliament to New York, where Milibandroid the Elder makes his own contribution to preserving Syrian lives as head of the charity International Rescue (no more Thunderbirds gags, thank you).
The tone for another monstrous year of civil war in Syria was set on January 1, when the airport at Aleppo was closed by bombing. The horror raged unabated as 2013 drew on, though compassion fatigue dictates that we read less and less about the conflict the longer it endures. 'In this globalized world, we have fallen into globalized indifference,' as Pope Francis put it. 'We have become used to the suffering of others.'
He clearly has not, and in July made his first official foreign trip to the Mediterranean island of Lampedusa, off the coast of which scores of economic migrants from Africa had drowned when their makeshift boats capsized. Holding a mass in their memory, he used the upturned wreck of a fishing vessel for the altar. 'These brothers and sisters of ours were trying to leave difficult situations to find a little serenity and peace,' he told a congregation of some 10,000 gathered on a sports field. 'They sought a better place for themselves and their families, but instead they found death.'
Anti-Morsi protesters celebrate in Cairo's Tahrir Square after he was toppled (Getty Images)
As ever, violence, turmoil and Acts of God plagued the developing world. The Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi was overthrown in July, and replaced by a military regime, though whether this was a coup d'etat or an expression of the popular will was oddly difficult to define.
The menace of Islamic extremism - no stranger to Britain, with Drummer Lee Rigby viciously hacked to death outside his barracks in Woolwich by the two converts convicted of his murder last week - saw the slaughter of 61 civilians and five Kenyan soldiers during a lengthy siege in a Nairobi shopping mall in September. A month later, Pope Francis led silent prayers in Rome for the more than 6,000 who died when Typhoon Haiyan ravaged the Philippines.
Here at home, where in that disaster's aftermath it felt insensitive to moan about the stormy autumn, there were moments of pure pleasure to leaven the gloom, though the first of two joyous domestic events in July fortnight was tinged with reflective grief. Interviewed by Sue Barker shortly before Wimbledon, Andy Murray wept and fell silent when asked about the massacre of 17 schoolmates and a teacher at his primary school in Dumblane - a unique atrocity here, but a tragically regular occurrence again in 2013 in the US, where the gun laws remained resolutely unreformed - where he escaped by hiding beneath the headmaster's desk.
Andy Murray kisses the winners trophy at Wimbledon (Reuters)
After Murray had nervily progressed to the final, his home town led the rejoicing when Novak Djokovic netted a backhand to end a closing game of staggering tension. It was never going to be entirely plain sailing, of course, and after Murray blew three consecutive championship points, Djokovic had three break points of his own to level the third set at 5-5.
Had the ferociously resilient Serb taken one of them, he might well have surfed the wave of Centre Court angst, and inflicted a national sporting trauma to put the current Ashes calamity to shame. Watched by one of his rivals for the title of Greatest Living Scot, Sir Sean Connery - but not another, Sir Alex Ferguson, who was marking his retirement as Manchester United manager with a rejujevating cruise - Murray came through the crisis with what looked like ungodly calm, though he later confessed to shaking uncontrollably.
It had famously been 77 years since a British man had won the Wimbledon singles title, and 119 years since a new born baby enabled a sovereign (Queen Victoria on the birth of Edward VIII) to look down from the throne upon three generations of heirs. Prince George of Cambridge ended that wait when he arrived, weighing an impressive 8lbs, 6oz, on July 22. The national goo-ing and international gaa-ing may have been a little intense for some tastes, but the monarchy ends the year more firmly cemented in the country's affections than ever.
Daniel Day-Lewis as President Abraham Lincoln (AP)
The same cannot be said in America of Barack Obama. His hero Abraham Lincoln had a fine year, with Daniel Day Lewis becoming the first man to win three Best Actor Oscars for playing Honest Abe in the film. But the incumbent's popularity declined sharply, despite a stronger economic recovery than our own and the Republicans' 11th hour retreat from the edge of the fiscal cliff, due to the technical catastrophes that affected the online introduction of the Affordable Care Act ('Obamacare').
With typically neat timing, Hillary Clinton jumped ship as Secretary of State when Obama's second term began to spend more time with her presidential ambitions, and while the outcome of the 2015 British general election remains impossible to call, she looks as close to a shoo-in for the White House in 2017 as could be imagined almost three years ahead of the vote.
She left it to her replacement John Kerry to cut the nuclear deal with Iran's new and more moderate Preisdent Hassan Rouhani that lengthens the odds against another dangerous and unpredictable middle eastern war. With Syria decommissioning its chemical weapons, thanks primarily to the almost sarcastic offer blurted by Mr Kerry, and Teheran softening its rhetoric, the world in which Prince George spent his first Christmas appears a shade less dangerous than the one in which he was conceived. Students of an increasingly deranged North Korean leadership, which engaged in more missile testing brinksmanship in 2013, might wish to argue the point. Kim Jung-Un's recent execution of his 'worse than a dog' uncle Jang Song-thaek, hints growing instabilty within the regime, and that 2014 may mark the time to stop finding North Korean lunacy quite so amusing for fear of laughing to death.
Chris Huhne (AFP)
A marginally less summary form of justice than that visited on Jang Song-thaek saw Chris Huhne and Vicky Pryce become house guests of Her Majesty for their speeding ticket conspiracy (although sadly for fans of the light comedy of manners, who had high hopes for a reworked prison version of Noel Coward's Private Lives, not in the same cell). Stuart Hall went down for a host of repellent crimes as the post-Jimmy Savile investigation into 'historical' celebrity sex offences rumbled on. A busy year for the courts ends with Rebekah Brooks, Andy Coulson and their fellow defendants barely halfway through the marathon phone-hacking trial.
Ronnie Biggs, who interrupted his time in jug for his part in the Great Train Robbery with that refreshing extended break in Rio was among those to whom we said farewell, as we did to Michael Winner, David Frost, Seamus Heaney, James Gandolfini, the Richards Briers and Griffiths, Peter O'Toole, Joan Fontaine, Iain Banks, Hugo Chavez and Lou Reed.
Yet it was the deaths of two titans of the turbulent second half of the 20th century which brand 2013 most indelibly on the memory. The personal styles of Margaret Thatcher and Nelson Mandela could have been no more starkly contrasted than their world views and respective routes to power. What they achieved when they took power, however, had this in common.
Nelson Mandela (Getty Images)
By sheer force of will and personality as much as political talent, each had more impact on the countries they led - Thatcher by smashing the post-war concensus to smithereens, and reversing the post-imperial defeatism; Mandela by steering South Africa clear of the universally anticipated post-apartheid bloodbath - than could be expected of any one human being. To some degree - the one for the part she played in ending the Cold War in the western democracies' favour; the other for offering a shining example that wicked injustice can be corrected without being murderously avenged - they also changed the world.
Their names will echo down the centuries. And if their passing underscores the depressing sense that the age of titans has passed, and that we are condemned to live through an era of pygmies, the emergence of Pope Francis as an shining light of humility and humanity offered some hope, fragile and nebulous, of better days to come.
And so, in the faith that those better days will not be long delayed, to a few bullish predictions of what we may expect from 2014.
The year begins with another outpouring of royalist joy when Zara Phillips has her baby. Concerns about the father's aptitude recede when Mike Tindall, claiming to have matured since that incident outside a New Zealand bar, tells reporters that he passed his NCT 'How to Distinguish an Infant from a Dwarf' course at the third attempt.
On Valentine's Day, an embarrased Nick Clegg admits that the selfie he posted on his Facebook page was photoshopped. Sources close to Mr Clegg say he has no regrets about imposing his head between President Obama and David Cameron, since he was at the Mandela memorial, but that with hindsight placing Socrates, Miley Cyrus and David Lloyd-George in the background was an error of judgment.
Chancellor George Osborne (Bloomberg)
In his Budget of March 19, George Osborne unveils a new windfall tax. 'From next April,' announces the Chancellor, 'any blond Daily Telegraph columnist who has served as mayor of a capital city will, if he returns to this House, have his parliamentary salary subjected to a surcharge of 4,500 per cent. This is a cental plank of our debt-reduction stategy, Mr Speaker, and in no way connected with any future election for the leadership of my party.'
The first serious retail scandal of the year rocks the supermarkets in April, when tests on frozen beef lasagnes find a 100 per cent concentration of beef.
David Cameron's worst fears are realised in May, when Ukip takes 31 per cent of the popular vote, and the Tories limp in third behind Labour. 'Yes, this is a wake up call,' he tells BBC political editor Nick Robinson. And yes, I hear what the voters are saying. But I am no Corporal Jones, and there will be no panic.' After asking Robinson for directions to Walmington-on-Sea, he is seen driving away in a n antiquated butcher's van brandishing a Crimean War bayonet.
In June, scandal rocks the World Cup after England fluke a 1-0 win over Costa Rica in the final group game. Although Roy Hodgson's lads were already eliminated, after heavy defeats to Italy and Uruguay, FIFA calls in Interpol. 'We have not detected any unusual betting patterns, but this result makes no sense at all,' says Sepp Blatter. 'We have strong suspicions of match-fixing.'
The energy companies fuel doubts about cartel tactics in July by jointly raising their charges by 27 per cent. 'This month, with the average ambient temperature at 78 degrees Fahrenheit,' a statement signed by all Big Six bosses explains, 'demand is outstripping supply by such a margin that we have no choice.'
The August Silly Season finds Adam Afriyie accused by Cameron loyalists of mounting yet another leadership campaign. The 'Tory Obama' admits that holding a get-together for all his political supporters in a photo-me booth outside a Tesco's near Windsor, but insists the only subject under discussion was how to promote party unity.
Nothing whatsoever happens in September, but a surprise Cabinet reshuffle in early October sees Theresa May made Chief Whip to quell residual rebelliousness from the Euro elections. Replacing her as Home Secretary, Andrew Mitchell declares: 'there will be no reprisals against the police. To prove there are no hard feelings, I am having the Met uniform redesigned as a mark of my respect for the brave men and women who protect us. In future, all constables will wear electric crimson posing pouches emblazoned across the crotch with the new Met motto, 'Pants On Fire!'.
In a startling diplomatic development, the Ecuadorian ambassador storms into the Foreign Office in November to claim asylum. 'I can't take another minute of Julian Assange, he's doing my head in,' Ana Alban tells William Hague. 'Do you have an opening for an office cleaner? I'll sleep in a broom cupboard between shifts.'
In December, after another eccentric Autumn Statement display from the shadow Chancellor, a forward-looking Robert Mugabe books Ed Balls to do the signing for the deaf at his funeral. 'His bewildering range of hand gestures are not always easy to follow,' admits a spokesman, 'but he's better than the guy who did Mandela's memorial, and that's good enough for us.'
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