Once conscription was introduced during the First World War, and once Britain's wars ceased being confined to the empire or to continental Europe and began seriously threatening our own shores and safety, it became much easier to denounce any anti-war agitation and argument as inherently irresponsible and unpatriotic.

Like the proverbial elephant in the room, American anti-Europeanism has loomed large for so long that few trouble to notice it.

Both Conservative and Labour politicians in Britain are rather too fond of praising the relative 'classlessness' of American society and of urging their own people to emulate it. There is a certain falseness about such arguments, and also a certain hypocrisy.

American prejudices about Europe rarely surface in headlines, but they are real, pervasive, and ingrained.

Monarchs, aristocrats, and other powerful and wealthy individuals have usually been happy to have themselves and their possessions and families immortalised in oil paintings and sculpture. But before the 20th century, such dynasts rarely commissioned artworks that set out to represent society as a whole.

Now, as in the past, rank is closely associated with modes of representation and display: with making an ordered arrangement of people or things visible and evident to onlookers in some fashion.

Much of how Americans have always understood their history, culture, and identity depends on positioning Europe as the 'other,' as that 'old world' against which they define themselves.

Too close and unthinking an allegiance to Washington has sometimes got British governments into trouble.

States that have experienced revolutions or have acquired their independence from empires - such as the U.S. or Australia - tend to celebrate their constitutional documents and put them on show in special galleries so that every citizen can become familiar with them. In the U.K., this is not properly done.