How they must hate it. London is a living breathing refutation of everything the jihadist fanatics believe in. It is cosmopolitan, open and free. All humanity is here – every race, every creed, every colour. It is a microcosm of the emerging global society. And it works. Imperfectly, yes. But it works.

Every day, the people of London make the countless small compromises that make a multicultural society possible. In doing so, they disprove the thesis that mankind is doomed to a clash of civilisations. And so the fanatics bomb. But they do not destroy.