Last night at dinner I was sitting beside a very young British diplomat and a very old Greek professor. The professor was waxing lyrical about the 1950s: “…and I told the King, your policy of undermining the British in Cyprus is disastrous! It will be bad for Cyprus and very bad for you! And when his son had to flee the country ten years later, I knew I had warned them! But it was too late!”

When the professor’s attention wandered, the young British diplomat whispered to me, “Can you explain what he meant about the Greeks undermining the British in Cyprus? It’s the first I’ve heard of it.” I explained that in the 1950s the Greeks had been funding and arming a terrorist movement which killed over a hundred (possibly lots more) British troops and administrators. I’m afraid I didn’t quite manage to hide my astonishment that a British diplomat, even a very young one, wasn’t aware of this major glitch in Anglo-Greek relations.

Of course the ex-King now lives in London, and has been there for ten times longer than he actually ruled in Greece…