As the former British Museum Director Neil MacGregor once put it: ‘What is very remarkable about German history as a whole is that the Germans use their history to think about the future, where the British tend to use their history to comfort themselves.’ But why are we like this? Why do we struggle to look our history in the eye? When other countries with difficult histories, such as Germany, do not? Having spent nearly two years thinking about it, a number of explanations have transpired, not least the fact that we have not, as a nation, been invaded or occupied in modern times. As a result
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