I remember this enclave when it wasn't fashionable. But even then it was a busy commercial alleyway in the heart of the capital of the British Empire - the greatest empire, as I think Churchill remarked, that the world has ever seen - a stone's throw from the corridors of power.

On Google, the phrase " the greatest empire (that) the world has ever seen" evokes a number of pale imitations, such as the Greeks, Romans and Barbarian Hordes. I spit on these puny empires. Why then, in my own lifetime, has the British Empire, that area of globe-spanning pink, shrunk to the home islands (and not the whole of these) and a few pathetic shards of jungle and islands of largely barren rock?