We are sitting around a long cloth-covered oval table in one half of an open-plan kitchen-diner shaped around a wide chimneystack.

In the dining area, an oval table inherited from an aunt sits in front of the original cast- iron stove.

Back in the basement, our oval table has been relaid.

The couple bought an oval table for the kitchen.

Within seconds, seven of the editors, writers and cartoonists around the large oval table in the meeting room were dead.