The first shot of the American Civil War was the Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbour on April 12th 1861. Of course, no serious historian begins the tale there. Wars of brothers do not erupt in a single day. Beneath the first cannonade lay a generation of corrosion – of trust, wealth and truth. Civil wars begin not with gunpowder but with people ceasing to believe in the same story.
The United Kingdom, our confection of islands and illusions, now trembles on a similar fault line. The question that once belonged to the margins – could Britain experience civil war? – has migrated, awkwardly, to the mainstream.
