Michel Barnier, who is something big in Europe, has long impressed me; at least on TV. I wish we in the UK had politicians like him. But his widely reported observation yesterday that (in effect) we Brits were against Europe because – or partly because – of nostalgia for our imperial past, I think is wrong. It’s what foreigners always assume about us – I’m for ever having it fired at me abroad – due I think to the sheer apparent size of Britain’s empire, and the myth, created by a number of my fellow historians, that the ‘people’ were complicit in it. On the contrary, my major book, The Absent-Minded Imperialists, argued – albeit controversially – that Britons in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries were mostly uninterested in the Empire, if not directly opposed to it, and as a result were hardly moved at all when it came to an end after World War II. The main exceptions were the upper and upper-middle classes, which would explain Farage’s, Boris’s and Rees-Mogg’s obvious reactionary empire-nostalgia today; but should not be assumed to represent the (relatively) more sensible element in the Brexit camp. The true roots of popular Brexitness are far more parochial.

I’m at Gatwick Airport just now, waiting for my flight back to Stockholm, and then out to our island summerhouse. So I’ll miss the visit of Trump to the UK, and apparently of his whole family, all of whom want have tea with the Queen. Hopefully she’ll put something something nasty – sennacot, perhaps? – in the pot.