IAIN AYRE COMPANY OWNERSHIP

What goes around comes around, as an American once said, wisely if obliquely. The Indians were building temples and the Chinese were inventing gunpowder while the Brits were painting themselves blue and eating mud. Then the Brits got their turn. They – or at any rate the Scots – invented the modern world, kicked the poo out of everybody else and ruled the roost for a while. Now the Indians and Chinese are on the way up again, and the Brits are in post-imperial