I know a trusty German, who I’ll keep anonymous throughout this one, not only for the sake of discretion, but also to universalise him a little, who loves Britain. He spends weeks and months travelling the expanse of the British Isles, scouring the streets of Newcastle, the chip shops of Glasgow (run, apparently, by Italians, according to this curious correspondent) the nightclubs of Oldham, the byways of Hendon. In short, he ranges the island in restless search, gleefully fascinated by the curious ways of his Saxon half-brothers. With some truth, he claims that he has seen more of England than me, with my 22 years of childhood, adolescence and then the frisson of study in northern towns.

I’m half-English by blood, but he’s spiritually embedded in the country, with all the fervour of a late, uprooted convert. When he’s out in England, he becomes a different person from the well-adjusted man he is in his settled home town in the Central European plains. He becomes a Steppenwolf. Crossing the channel is to him like crossing the borders of civilisation, and the lower impulses of his body take over.