The current decade has cut that enduring British invention, the joint stock company, down to size. Just a few years ago, some prophets said that the future belonged to corporations. Operating across borders and wielding huge economic and political clout, they would overshadow enfeebled national governments.

Looking back at these beliefs, one feels the same rummage sale nostalgia that is inspired by briar pipes and Biggles. Companies, it has transpired, are a lot like people, being both fallible and mortal. It is the eternal state, impersonal and self-renewing, that matters most, because it dispenses the franchise under which companies flourish or fail.