Reader beware – this is an open letter about race on both sides of the Atlantic. The truths expressed here make for uncomfortable reading, but I encourage you to read on: the time for sticking heads in the sand has long since passed.

We are all now familiar with the social unrest in the USA, so there is no need to recapitulate at length.

Disgust and disbelief turned into anger, anger into protest, and peaceful protest morphed into disruptive civil disobedience in response to George Floyd's killing in Minnesota on 25 May (and Amy Cooper's abhorrent abuse of racial privilege in New York, and the modern-day lynching of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia, and [insert injustice of the reader's choice…]).