Those wartime virtues, along with some characteristically English vices of the same vintage, are evident in the extracts from the Trevor-Roper diaries, elegantly edited by Richard Davenport-Hines. The feline wit of Hugh Trevor-Roper, the cleverest and most cultivated historian of his generation, is already apparent. It would later be exhibited to great effect in the weekly letters that he wrote for the Spectator under the pseudonym, Mercurius Oxoniensis. The editor of the Spectator was then Nigel Lawson, whose own formidable intelligence emerges from this month’s Dialogue with the equally brilliant Oliver Letwin on the fraught issue of global warming. Lawson recounts how his book on the subject almost failed to find a publisher; it has now risen to near the top of what (according to Max Davidson) we ought really to call the “better-selling” lists.

There is much, much more in this July issue. The Anglo-American theme will resurface when, on July 16, we invite readers to the first Standpoint Salon at Borders bookshop on Oxford Street to hear the influential American author Philip Bobbitt in discussion with Michael Gove MP. (For details, see page 65.) I look forward to meeting some of the thousands of people who have already discovered Standpoint.

You are all invited to come and celebrate Western civilisation over a glass of wine.