Points of view

I suspect that whether or not you admire Neil MacGregor’s latest series for Radio 4, As Others See Us (produced by Paul Kobrak and Tom Alban), will depend on how you feel about Brexit. To my ears, it was shamelessly in favour of a Britain that stays in Europe and remains committed to its global role as the voice of moderation, a disseminator of liberal values, unusual in its ability to draw in other influences while retaining a strong sense of its own identity — and therefore to be cheered and recommended as essential listening. MacGregor is doing everything within his power to show us what we need to hear, before it’s too late, in these five intense and impassioned programmes.

He set off across the globe in search of an answer to that question ‘how do others see us?’, choosing Germany, Egypt, Nigeria, Canada and India as representative of widely differing connections to the United Kingdom, former enemies, subjects, compatriots.