Britain has been so lucky. It was perfectly placed for the Industrial Revolution. As an island, it had short lines of communication and transportation with plentiful rivers. Where these were lacking, it dug canals and, forty years later, took trains to the remotest parts of the kingdom. No town or city was more than seventy miles from the sea. Despite its smallness, it had huge reserves of coal and iron. It had displaced despotic kingship with a parliamentary system and had finally become a settled state. Excellent universities worked with inventors and entrepreneurs. Even the factory system and workers turning up at a set time for a set number of hours was their idea. Previously, they had relied on the church bells or a man walking along a street knocking on doors to know the time. Now, thanks to Adam Smith and people like him, they all had affordable timepieces. Hard taskmasters as they were, they were also the first to introduce Bank Holidays.

Commerce was the big driver, even with empire, of which they were often reluctant participants. It even saw itself from the early 19th century as doing God’s work. Its queen, with her dedicated, hardworking German husband, strove to set an example of family life. Is it surprising that before long, they came to believe that the Almighty Himself had appointed them to be a light to the nations? They went out, Bible in hand, to bring the blessings of the scriptures and modernity to distant lands. Their hymns, ‘Jerusalem’ and ‘Greenland’s Icy Mountains’, encapsulate their thinking. All this, and much more, combined with a good business ethos and an all-powerful navy, allowed it to forge ahead to create the world we know today.

How misbegotten it was when I was young to ridicule someone by calling them a Victorian. They were an astonishing breed. However, having said all that I have, any nation blessed with so many advantages would have achieved the same.