Well … we finally got to 5 November. Of course, you know the story. Once upon a time, there was a bad guy who wanted to set fire to a country’s political system. Metaphorically, but also literally. I mean, he wasn’t subtle, this guy. This Guy, I should say, because his name was Guy Fawkes. Why – who did you think I was talking about?

Because time’s a great healer, Britons now celebrate the thwarting of this truly awful Guy’s insurrection with fireworks, fires and organised effigy-burning. But the good version of those things – not the kind we do when we go out of a football tournament in the later stages. We’re still working on teasing out the family fun in those particular moments.

Incidentally, before I proceed further, a word about the timing of this column, which I am writing on Tuesday morning but which will appear in the Wednesday print edition of this newspaper. That is My Struggle, assuming there isn’t a monopoly on that working title in the current news cycle. And even without those challenges of the calendar, it is impossible to know how many people out there are catching up with the Gunpowder Plot on a time lag. Furthermore, there will be long-view historians who will argue that we still don’t actually really know the ultimate knock-on results and/or fallout of it all. So if you are catching up with the whole........

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