One wing of the British Museum, in a crowd in a heatwave while jetlagged, but I did get to see Lindow Man (an ancestor), the Sutton Hoo ship burial and the Lewis chessmen. One wing of the V&A on a cooler day and lunch with a friend in the spectacular cafe, the first museum cafe ever, what a good innovation. A bookshop in Notting Hill; no, not that one, the other one. Bike rides to Westminster and Chelsea. The Chelsea Physic Garden with a glass of Pimm’s and another friend: you are my medicine.

Our rental car: an electric blue Mini Cooper. Avebury henge, even more beautiful than I imagined it, with a gratuitous game of cricket off to one side. The warm surface of the stones, so large, so lichen-y: more ancestors. Oak trees in golden grasslands like it’s freakin’ West Sonoma county out here. Cheshire at golden hour, with hares grazing among the sheep and cattle in the hayfields. Reading Elizabeth Gaskell, Barbara Pym, Elizabeth Taylor (not that one, the other one), Virginia Woolf. A Hendricks and tonic under a tree at the Cholmondeley Arms. A walk around the Roman walls of Chester. Jodrell Bank, peering out at the cosmic microwave radiation: another ancestor.

Although Britain has yet to produce the quantities of superb art found on the continent, there are one or two examples of carving on bone, ivory and stone. My personal favourite is a very confident yet delicately executed horse’s head on a fragment of horse rib, found in a cave at Creswell Crags, Derbyshire.

She considered other writers aloofly. “Shakespeare,” she said reluctantly. “Perhaps Goethe,” she added, using a pronunciation of her own.

The Major had told him one day that in five years’ time no one would read any more. Later, archaeologists would ponder on, argue about, what books had been for. ‘It’ll all be telly; visual aids.’ ‘Then why are more books published every year?’

Seldom penetrated by love for mankind as I am, I sometimes feel sorry for the poor who don’t read Shakespeare

Did people then only go for the light and warmth, the coffee after the Sunday morning service and a friendly word from the vicar?