I wish I’d been older (i.e., not in primary school) in 1996-7 – I wonder whether people were really as optimistic as everyone says they were. And there was hardly the cultural Renaissance McGuire claims. Blur are pretty awful, especially their lyrics (‘He’s reading Balzac | Knocking back Prozac’ – oh dear), and most of the YBAs were (and are) a joke. I suppose it depends on whether you think confidence is more important than talent.

Dwelling on London too much is also a mistake, I think, because there’s surely more optimism in the provinces. And the problem with that new shopping centre in Shepherd’s Bush isn’t that it’s full of shops, but that these out-of-town places are becoming increasingly unpopular. The whole thing seems profoundly stupid and unnecessary.

One quibble – please remove the word ‘utopianism’!