The English Wars of the Roses (1450-1485) were savage bloody affairs. Forget all the costumes and Shakespearean poetry: the dynastic struggles of York and Lancaster really mattered at the time, and as late as Elizabeth 1 , the succeeding Tudor Dynasty lived in constant fear that a Plantagenet claimant might reignite the struggle. Now fast forward 80 years or so to the English Civil War, an even more sanguinary and passionate affair. No one cared in the slightest who was a Yorkist or a Tudor. You might as well have talked about Romans and Carthaginians for all the relevance it had at Marston Moor. Over, gone, forgotten.

Here’s another thought. Growing out of that civil war came a rivalry between Crown and Parliament that lasted for well over a hundred years, and twice exploded into violent war in the Jacobite rebellions (1715 and 1745) The leader of the second rebellion, called Bonnie Prince Charlie by some, lingered in exile until 1788. Read that last date carefully. Because the next year was the start of the French Revolution, unleashing a series of global changes so far reaching and dramatic that the world would never be the same again. Would anyone at Trafalgar, Waterloo or even in the British House of Commons, have tried to map their experiences onto a template provided by the Bonny Prince?

Our present age lasted from the Second World War until the second election of Donald Trump. It’s founding myth was 1940: gallant Britain battled alone until the mighty United States arrived to tip the scales decisively for the forces of freedom and goodness. After the war the benefits of Anglo-Saxon order were spread to places like Europe and Japan. It was good while it lasted. People kept gardens, obsessed with sport, brought hundreds of bright new shiny things and believed themselves to be clever and happy and free. Many thought it ws the natural order of things and would last forever.

We believe that the fundamental order of that world cracked after the US invaded Iraq in 2003. It was shattered by the financial crisis of 2008. Technological developments such as social media and fossil fuels produced profound and unmanageable instabilities in the environments of even very rich countries, rendering their political and economic settlements obsolete.

It is easy to mourn the passing of the old order, easy to rail against its destroyers like Trump and Putin. Such nostalgia is dangerous, for it will lead to attempts to live in the vanished past and even recreate it. Far better to first recognise this is a new age, and all old assumptions, all old patterns have been shattered irrevocably. There were good things in the old order. They must be preserved. There will be good things in the new, however remote and distant they seem. You have the weekend, ladies and gentlemen to consider what those might be. Enjoy it profitably, and we will see you on Monday.

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