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In a post-Brexit era of swelling imperial nostalgia and revisionism, the story of Alum Bheg’s skull – a war-trophy from the Indian ‘Mutiny’ of 1857 discovered in a pub in Kent – offers a telling example of how a genuinely nuanced history of the British Empire might be written.

The man Guinean president Alpha Condé likes to compare himself with is none other then Nelson Mandela. And yes, there are similarities.

Gordon Brown was not the enthusiast for Afghanistan that his predecessor was, and had none of the passion that Tony Blair had for counternarcotics. With the Foreign Affairs Committee describing the partner nation role in counternarcotics as a “poisoned chalice” in 2009 the UK actively began looking for an amicable separation.