Frank sat back and stared up at the fireworks exploding over the Potomac, the strains of patriotic music on the edge of what he could hear from the District.

There was something odd about being an Englishman on the Fourth of July; the defeated enemy watching the fete of his defeat. He had not received anything but welcoming and friendly overtures from his American hosts, but even so none of them had missed the chance to point out that he was witnessing the celebration of his nation’s own Waterloo.

There was really nothing like this at home. There was Saint George’s Day, which usually passed without mention apart from on conservative talk radio – a much less powerful force in the United Kingdom than he had found it to be in the US. There was the Last Night of the Proms, but that was not really even close to comparable. Having not been invaded for nearly a thousand years there was no great opressor’s downfall to cherish, no great uprising to remember. England was a rock, an island, and he liked Her that way.