Long life | 15 September 2016

It’s been a very patriotic weekend, ablaze with Union flags. In London there was the Last Night of the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall, and in South Northamptonshire there was the ninth annual ‘Village at War’ festival at Stoke Bruerne on the Grand Union Canal. I watched the first event on television but attended the second in person, because Stoke Bruerne is where I spend my weekends. These events, of course, were rather different in scale, but both evoked times of Britain’s greater glory and both took place under the shadow of the Brexit referendum in June. My own vote was in favour of remaining in the European Union, but I was part of the minority in South Northamptonshire, where 54.3 per cent of voters chose to leave. The majority followed our Brexiteer MP, Andrea Leadsom, who achieved such celebrity during the referendum campaign that she even aspired briefly to the premiership.