I grew up in London, in the East End. It was a rough and ready place back then. School was a mixture of learning and trying not to get beaten-up on a daily basis. I’m not complaining. I look back on that part of my life with pleasure and large amounts of love. My parents were good — they fed us well, gave us lots of hugs and the occasional thump around the ears, when we stepped out of line. My father is dead now. He thumped the hardest, but he gave the biggest cuddles.

I travelled England for many years as a salesman and I saw what was left of the dark Satanic mills and the awful, awful coal mines that provided so much life and death to so many. Back then (and probably still today) England’s green and pleasant lands were mostly owned by the rich, the so-called noble, the famous and the infamous but they were nonetheless green and very pleasant.

And toward the end of most every summer as I listened to the last night of the Proms and with all those thousand, upon thousands sang with all my voice the words to ‘Jerusalem’, a tear would sometimes form and I knew for all its troubles and its faults, this was my home.