Not too likely judging by my current rate of promotion, but if I were God and mulling over a bit of fire and brimstone for the House of Commons, Richard Body’s membership might stay My hand. We get plenty of cloudy abstractions about Europe but Sir Richard, the very model of the English genius-eccentric, quietly asks ‘yes, but what would a United Europe be like?’ Body represents our richest farming constituency, but his quiet modesty has enabled him to survive three books (another on the way) asking why we should subsidise agriculture at £10,000m+ a year for poisoned food and polluted land.

J-B Duroselle is as French as Body is English. He did well at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, a high-class teacher training college. He taught at the lycées of Chartres and Versailles – state schools – and at universities. Recently he was President of one of the Academies. The same man