In the mass media and cultural institutions, we have just marked the 100-year anniversary of Armistice by continuing to fixate on warfare – at the expense of our remarkable history in peace.

How did we end up here? Where the well-funded public defenders of our ‘embattled civilisation’ put so much energy into the culture wars and so little into the culture? Where the defenders of free thought want to send operatives in to run ‘health checks’ on free academics? The Ramsay Centre debacle has been almost too tiresome to even engage with: the usual battle lines, the familiar sense of righteous paranoia, that same elite anti-elitism.