‘You have done something great today. You have defied terror.’ There was a second round of cheers, quickly hushed. His tone was different from the tub-thumping he’d done before edition. There was a melancholy in it, the victor’s sense of incompleteness. Nevertheless, he went on: ‘We have become a target because we have fought in long and unwavering defence of the principles that England holds dear, or ought to: our liberty, our decency, our sovereignty and our sense of justice.’ He looked into their faces and even those who thought him a tyrant were stirred.

‘Often have we had to stand between this country and subjugation; to unelected technocrats in Brussels, to the secret courts of our own government, to a metropolitan elite that holds the rest of the country in disdain, and finally, to that elite’s cowardice in tolerating the extremists in our midst.’

He held out a hand towards Jeremy. ‘Come over here.’ Jeremy was tilting back his chair, his mind still running, and snapped forward when summoned. For the first time in the decade and a half he’d worked there, he felt everyone’s attention on him.

He went up to the Editor like an Oscar winner to the podium, barely managing to stop himself grinning. The Editor sombrely shook his hand and said to the crowd, ‘I do not need to remind you that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. And, through his vigilance, Mr Underwood has not only saved this newspaper from physical destruction but has also given us the opportunity to demonstrate that newspapers themselves are in anything but decline. Chief sub, three cheers, please.’

The chief, keeping his face completely blank and perhaps just standing ever so slightly, almost imperceptibly, to attention, called out, ‘Hip-hip!’

And everyone but the chief, the Editor and Jeremy cried, ‘Hooray!’

‘Hip-hip!’

‘Hooray!’

‘Hip-hip!’

‘Hooray!’

Max relaxed into unmodulated pride for his friend.

Putting his hand on Jeremy’s shoulder, the Editor continued: ‘And our vigilance will not end with this splash. They will hurl whatever else they have at us. So tomorrow we will move somewhere we can better defend ourselves. As a few of you will know, the Beast has long maintained a fortified newsroom in Berkshire for the eventuality of attack. We will decamp there in the morning. At last, we will clear out of London. No more of this place.’ With a huge sweep of his hand, he cast London aside.

‘We will return to the heartland, to make our stand among the people whose champions we are. Back to the meadows, the lanes, the hedgerows and the country churches, the hills and the hundreds, the village greens, the guildhalls, the real England.’