Bleak times in Britain

This column has taken a short break from London, in composition if not content. I’m writing in an idyllic setting, on the terrace of a charming villa surrounded by bougainvillea and perched on a pine-filled Croatian hillside above the translucent waters of the Adriatic.

Back home, the news is almost unremittingly of the pessimistic kind – inflation is up, productivity down, transport strikes