Liberation Square was unnaturally warm and humid due to the surrounding jets of paraffin flame that constituted the Smog Dispersal System: the intense heat from the circle of bright fires evaporated the suspended droplets of water in the smog, thinning it until there was just a light smoky mist. It had saved the lives of countless air crews during the War who would otherwise have been unable to find the landing strips, and now it enabled us to see our leaders in all their glory. Along with boiling the air, its light threw a strange dark glow on us, accentuating the lines and shadows in everyone’s flesh.

And, finally, there he was: borne on a wave of cheers, Anthony Blunt, standing upright in a huge, open-topped car sweeping along the road. Officially, Blunt’s role in the day’s ceremonies was to pay respect to his forebears, not to receive it for himself. So he had first visited the desk in the National Museum Reading Room at which Marx had sat while he composed Das Kapital, and then the great man’s grand mausoleum at Highgate Cemetery. Now Blunt was serenely climbing to the platform as the crowd shouted his name. At precisely one thirteen, the time that the Archangel’s guns had fired for the first time on a German cruiser, a squadron of Red Guards shot three times into the air, and Comrade Anthony Blunt stepped to the microphone.

He stood for a moment surveying the crowd as we waited upon his words. A breeze slipped among us. Then he leaned in and spoke, his aristocratic voice dripping with confidence. ‘The destiny of man is a river. It has shallows and rapids. Eddies and calms. There are times when it is so dark that it cannot be made out, and others when it is so bright that a child knows where it is heading. We know where we are heading.’ He waited as people whispered to their neighbours. His address was different from those he broadcast on the radio: there was less delicacy and nuance; these were words for a huge audience. ‘We know because for the first time in the tide of human life, we, the people, can steer our course.’ More whispering, excitement. The wind blew the heat from the paraffin jets over us.

He grew more forceful. ‘For the first time in history, no one who falls sick will die from want of care; no one will sit idle for want of work; no one will lie hungry for want of bread. For the first time in history, all men and all women can choose their rulers; can walk where they want, can say what they believe.’ I couldn’t help but wish that were true, and somehow, as he said it with confidence and commitment, I almost believed that it were. Atmosphere can do so much to what you feel and think. ‘We know what we believe.’