In turbulent times, there’s sherry

I sometimes wander through Trafalgar Square in the small hours when the traffic has abated and children are no longer scrambling over Landseer’s lions. Hard by his own Whitehall, there is Charles I, a symbol of the constitutional agonies of that era. To most high Tories, he is Charles, King and martyr, Anglicanism’s only saint. Even Marvell saw the romance. -Others’ -responses blend tribute with exasperation. Raison d’état can require ruthlessness and Charles I was not the first failed monarch to meet a premature death. If only Cromwell had arranged for an accidental discharge, rather than a judicial murder.

Moving on and looking up, the eye can feast on unalloyed romance: that most glorious of heroes, Admiral Lord Nelson, on his column. He too can claim the laurels of martyrdom, for he fell protecting his country’s freedom. ‘Bonaparte may come to England, Sire,’ said St Vincent to George III, ‘but he will not come by sea.’