At a recent speech to mark the launch of the new Cambridge History of Ireland, Michael D Higgins, the Irish president, spoke eloquently on the importance of knowing about the past. “A knowledge and understanding of history,” he observed, “is intrinsic to our shared citizenship. To be without such knowledge is to be permanently burdened with a lack of perspective, empathy and wisdom.”

And, he continued, “to be without historical training, the careful and necessary capability to filter and critically interpret a variety of sources, is to leave citizens desperately ill equipped to confront a world in which information is increasingly disseminated without historical perspective or even regard for the truth.”

On an earlier occasion, Higgins had urged the need to see history “as essential to understanding who we are today”, and as also necessary to debunk myths, challenge inaccuracies and expose deliberate amnesia or invented versions of the past. In so saying, he was in good company, for as Eric Hobsbawm once put it, to know little of the past is “to grow up in a sort of permanent present, lacking any organic relation to the public past of the times we live in”.

Hobsbawm, in turn, reiterated a point Cicero had made long ago: “To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of a human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?”

These are wise words, and it would be good to hear senior figures in the British government saying similar things. Whatever the outcome of the Brexit negotiations may be, Theresa May and her colleagues are making history, and it would be reassuring to know they are well informed about the history of Britain’s relations with Europe or, indeed, of Britain’s relations with Ireland, as they try to reach a deal with Brussels.

A knowledge of history is not only vital for an educated citizenry but also for good government. Yet, in England, history is a compulsory subject in state schools only up to the age of 14, but should be taught to all pupils up to GCSE level.

Every year, at about this time, the Wolfson History Prize, whose judges I am privileged to chair, is awarded for an outstanding work of history, combining the highest levels of scholarship with accessible writing, chosen from a shortlist of six books.

And the prize is given out in the belief that history is simultaneously a demanding academic discipline but also an essential part of our national culture and national life. “The present,” Soames Forsyte of The Forsyte Saga once observed to his daughter, Fleur, “is rooted in the past; the future in both”. The powers-that-be seem to understand that in Ireland; do they understand it here in Britain?