Are Boris’s admirers prepared to have their hearts broken?

When I was 18, I had my first tutorial on Anglo-Saxon history. I cannot remember the details but the don talked of the king of Mercia, or some such, marrying his daughter to the son of the king of Northumbria, or somewhere or other, because of the political advantages the union would bring the two crowns.

The teenage Cohen listened appalled. ‘You mean,’ I cried, ‘they didn’t love each other?’

In a voice so acid, it might have burnt through the hull of a battleship, the don hissed: ‘I do not subscribe to the Mills & Boon school of British history.’

After that encounter, I stopped subscribing too.

Views of the veracity of the man it appears will be our next prime minister fall into two camps. Many of my darling colleagues are in the Mills & Boon school of British journalism. The incurable romantics hold that when Boris Johnson says he believes it is Britain’s best interests to leave the European Union, he means it, in a truly caring way. The