At the end of a fairly nasty barrage from the Islamists — to which we returned plenty of fire — he, Asra and I had another reminder of what America now is. It was we who were expected to be on the defensive. Yet it was only our side who were under any threat. At the end a friend in the front row of the audience came forward to say well done. A wall of police and security guards threw themselves between us. America still has free speech, but it doesn’t feel very free.

***

A week earlier I had been on assignment in Lampedusa and Sicily, chasing the migrant crisis story round the Mediterranean. I managed to get the last possible plane back to the UK and arrived, unshaven and under-dressed, for a magnificent dinner at the Victoria and Albert Museum in honour of George Weidenfeld.

The crisis in the Mediterranean is an unbelievably complex and harrowing story. But it is also haunted — like everything else — by our past. Are these people going to become Europeans? If so, what type of Europe are we intending to make? Among the migrants travelling across continents to get here are some who will be coming not just to the geographical place called Europe, but for the idea of Europe. If there is one person who epitomises that idea for me it is George, himself a refugee in 1938 from Austria to Britain and a totem of our culture and politics.

But while migrations have often happened, all migrations are different. How easy is it for an Eritrean to become a European? Not impossible. But not easy. Of course it would be so much easier if we were culturally confident. But we are not. And the fear I had, as I sat in that Raphael-bedecked room, listening to the heartwarming speeches while looking at an altar-screen of St George slaying the Dragon, was that we are doing next to nothing to introduce these new arrivals into the culture that comprises our continent. This is in some ways the greatest failure of our age.