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We certainly know he was an early and ardent advocate of a United Europe (Zurich speech, September 1946) and headed the British delegation to the Hague conference of 1948 which laid the foundations of what is now the European Union. At the Hague, he argued explicitly for full British involvement, though later on he seemed to favour a very close but slightly apart role for Britain, a bit like what is nowadays called the ‘Norway option’.

However, since that means being a rule-taker, I am sure that the real Winston, if with us today, would have insisted on Britain staying on the inside, jointly making the rules.

He was not afraid, back in 1948, to say that European unity meant “some sacrifice of national sovereignty”, but saw such “larger sovereignty” as the way to “protect our diverse and distinctive customs and characteristics”.

Yes – Churchill’s rhetoric always played on the imagination and appealed to the longer vision.

He would have pitied “Project Fear” and the mealy-mouthed official Remain campaign and, if a bit reluctantly, would surely have voted Remain; a Churchillian speech today would excoriate Mrs May’s narrow tramline thinking.

The great exponent of parliamentary democracy would also have been utterly aghast at the willingness of so many MPS to surrender their responsibility for the country’s interests in face of a narrow referendum result brought about by lies painted on the side of a bus.

One of Churchill’s favourite poems was Edwin Milliken’s Who is in Charge of the Clattering Train?” – the tale of a train riding to a dreadful accident because the crewman in charge was asleep, a poem which his grandson, Sir Nicholas Soames has recently tweeted for its relevance today. Sir Nicholas’s mother remembered her father reciting it in 1938 as he watched a Conservative government sleep-walking to war with Hitler.

Sir Nicholas is spot on: as our political masters doze on, playing their Westminster games, the Brexit disaster looms ever closer.