I’ll argue that in this early 21st century venality and appalling inequity is again (still) on general display, that institutions are both revered and detested, that pandemics dominate and fundamentally change our world, and that reason seems lost amid a sea of conspiracy theories, despite the best efforts of some authorities. As Julia Hurst and Zoe Laidlaw observed recently, ‘…identity is rooted in history, and so history cannot be escaped.’