Black's books sell because they do precisely what they say on the tin. Georgian Devon [2003], The British Seaborne Empire [2004], George III [2006], The Rise of the European Powers 1679-1793 [1990] and so on are books that inform their readers in a comprehensive way, free of psychobabble and political ideology. Were a Polish, French, German or Russian historian to produce a body of work as good and as extensive as the 53-year-old Black's, drawing on such vast knowledge and intensive research, while all the time holding down a professorial teaching post, he would be the toast of his nation. Here, he is largely ignored or treated as a workaholic.

I slightly suspect that we in Britain also like our historians to be waspish and tough, extrovert and noisy, rather than sweet-tempered, good-natured and jolly, like Black. It's too late for him to contract the donnish malice that endeared AJP Taylor and Hugh Trevor-Roper to the British, or toss off the harsh asides of David Starkey, or acquire the revivalist Obamamania of Simon Schama, or even take on the instinctive megaphone reactionary opinions of some of the rest of us - including, I admit, myself on occasion.

Instead, he will merely keep on churning out very good books that are largely ignored by the intelligentsia. We must hope that perhaps when his 100th is published - presumably in only four or five years' time - a grateful nation will finally recognise him as the fine historian he has always been.