The Ancient Greeks believed the past was in front of us and the future behind. Man could look history in the face and learn from it, while the future was unknowable, hidden, the wind whistling at our back.

It is in history, its patterns, and what it reveals about human nature, that we have the best guide to our times and how they might develop. The government may wish us to focus on innovation this week – new nuclear reactors, AI data centres, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang at the state banquet – but if we really want to understand the convulsions gripping our society it is to the past we should look for signs.

The tens of thousands who marched through London at the weekend demanding their country back has been reported as an unprecedented example of mass reactionary prote

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