Prophetic, too, is the voice of Geoffrey Hill. A Nobel for England's greatest living poet is long overdue. Even more scandalous, however, is the fact that he should have reached his 80th year without having received any recognition from the land of his birth, other than his election as Professor of Poetry at Oxford. The Order of Merit has a vacancy after the death of Lucian Freud, and it is high time that the natural successor to T.S. Eliot and Ted Hughes (both of whom were appointed OM) should take his place alongside Sir Tom Stoppard, our greatest living playwright.

It is no mere coincidence that almost all the aforementioned living writers have been associated with Standpoint. Distinguished not only by their seniority, but by their moral courage, they are just a few of the luminaries in the intellectual galaxy that have gathered around the magazine in less than four years. Feted abroad but neglected at home, they have done the British state some service. Do the Queen and the Prime Minister know it?

The defence of civilisation has never been more urgent. The turmoil among the tyrannies of the world, from Cairo to Moscow and from Damascus to Rangoon, reminds us that countless millions still look to the West for encouragement and hope. These are only the visible manifestations of the eternal yearning to be free that is hidden in the human heart, wherever it may be. It is true that certain faiths, ideologies and cultures make submission the supreme virtue, while the civilisation that emerged from Athens, Rome and Jerusalem has cherished liberty in all its forms: free will, free speech, free trade and freedom under the law. The world we inhabit has inherited an unresolved tension: between those who wish to restrict our freedom at every turn, whether in the name of God or that of Caesar, or for whom there is no distinction between the two; and those who seek, little by little, to enlarge the realms of light.

Last year saw too many hopes raised, though our worst fears were not realised. This new year, too, is pregnant with promise and peril for the world in general and the West in particular. Let us pray that the English-speaking peoples will prevent, as they so often have before, a new iron curtain descending on humanity: between freeborn men and women subject only to God, and the slaves of the state.