During the May Day protests in England in 2000, nothing infuriated the British establishment — its press, its politicians, its courts of respectable opinion — more than the desecration of Winston Churchill’s statue in Parliament Square. The savage blood red spray-painted around Churchill’s mouth, the livid green strip of grass giving him a mohawk haircut, transforming the stoical father of the nation into the Joker, was unconscionable. Iconoclasm was all very well, to be encouraged even, but not when the target was an actual icon!

It is difficult to convey the symbolic and emotional value of this man to Britain’s ruling class, and to a significant though declining number of its citizens. Those whose national consciousness is shaped by folk memories of World War II, probably the last moment of “greatness” save for England’s World Cup win in 1966, mostly know Churchill as the man who, more than any other, crushed the Nazi menace. Leading a wartime coalition government, he exhorted what had been a badly led and sold-out nation to dare, and win. He saved the British state, steering it through one of its worst crises. In his lifetime, Churchill was the last truly loved British leader; no one has since come close.

When I was at school in the 1980s in the north of Ireland, emerald jewel of the Empire, this was still a powerful sentiment. Our red-faced, Unionist history teacher, exploring World War II, recounted with pride an apocryphal story wherein Hitler, having heard that Churchill was leading the war effort, said with awe-stricken wonder, “What will we do now?” And we pupils, bright-eyed and remote, were deeply satisfied to think of it. What will you do now? Get your ass kicked, that’s what. Don’t mess with the best.