Ken Loach, thankfully no smear campaign against him can succeed. Not only because Ken’s work and life are proof of the accusation’s absurdity, but also because of the courageous Israelis who take awful risks by defending the right of Jews and non-Jews alike to criticise Israel.

Historically, the châteaux of the Loire Valley were assessed by their windows. ‘A fifty-windowed castle’, an onlooker might surmise to suggest its worth. Russian boyars quantified their properties in souls–whether dead or alive, according to Gogol’s Dead Souls.

The Chilean media were quick to label the October 2019 popular uprising an ‘estallido social’, a social explosion. As the cry of ‘Chile despertó!’­– Chile woke up!–rang out in the streets, the refrain in television studios was that ‘no one saw this coming’.