When I was a boy in Yorkshire, stuck in the monochrome austerities of the 1950s, I had a recurring dream. Night after night, I found myself on the deck of a great ocean liner, sailing past the Statue of Liberty into New York harbour. Fuelled by musicals such as On the Town, my love affair with New York blossomed into a fantasy of skyscrapers, yellow taxis, and good times scored by Gershwin. But when I finally made it to the city, I found a different focus for my passion.

Tucked in behind the outstretched arm of the Statue of Liberty, like a sober secretary shadowing a star, Ellis Island looks resolutely unglamorous. Approaching on the ferry after the brief trip from the tip of Manhattan, the island could be an abandoned prison. In fact it’s an astonishing treasure house, storing the memory of the 12m immigrants who passed through here on their way to begin new lives in the US. It’s 40 years now since I first came to New York but Ellis Island remains for me a reminder of everything I love about the city.