How remarkable that John Noakes still has the power to affect me so

Even in a country that is cleaved to its past with the desperation of a befuddled and irrelevant post-imperial power, there can have been few weeks for nostalgia like this one. Since you need to be of a certain age to appreciate the poignancy, readers aged below 45 are excused and given permission to move on. But for those who recall the year with special affection (however misplaced that has come to seem), it felt for a while as if Britain slipped through the space-time continuum and stumbled