We still take long walks through the city to see how this or that neighbourhood is coming on. My husband is an historian by training. As a writer, I've attempted scholarly but popular history. History seems to stare us in the face. I read all the plaques and find even pubs have something to say. Our smoky local, for instance, is an unexpected shrine to Anglo-Czech friendship with a real Spitfire upended in the middle of the bar and disappearing through the ceiling. Beside the tiny cockpit is an RAF uniform and the logbook of a member of the Czech squadrons. Two such squadrons fought in the Battle of Britain. It's the history of my father's generation up there on the wall. Then it turns out that the life-story of the brave Czech pilot is actually fictitious.

Prague is unique, yet once when I flew here straight from Barcelona and spent one warm evening after another near floodlit historic buildings, I felt I hadn't moved anywhere and this was simply one Europe, now filling the Charles Bridge, now strolling down the Ramblas. It is remarkable how over the last 20 years histories have become mere decorative backdrops to the chief experience of shared leisure. Then again, what happens when the money runs out?