Whether British culture is the world’s best is an unanswerable and ultimately pointless question. But it has a very good claim, pound for pound, to be its most successful. There is a strong case, of course, for American culture, but the facts and figures make interesting reading. Only Shakespeare and the King James Bible have sold more books than Agatha Christie. Almost half a century after they broke up, The Beatles are still comfortably the most successful musical group of all time. The Lord of the Rings is the second bestselling novel ever written, behind only A Tale of Two Cities. No children’s hero has ever sold more books than Harry Potter, not even Noddy or Thomas the Tank Engine. The James Bond films are the world’s longest-running film series; Doctor Who is its longest-running science fiction series; Coronation Street its longest-running television soap opera. Indeed, British television can claim to be one of the nation’s outstanding export industries. Between 2011 and 2014, Britain sold more than 600 shows abroad, six times as many as Germany, a country with a bigger economy and a bigger population. Sherlock is watched in some 200 countries, and when the second series began in China, the video site Youku Tudou reported almost 50 million hits. Downton Abbey, meanwhile, is watched in more than 250 countries, and has received more Emmy nominations than any other international series in history. Even Top Gear is sold to some 214 countries, more than any other factual programme on the planet. It even boasts a loyal audience in Iran, which protested fiercely when the BBC’s Persian channel dropped an episode for an exclusive interview with Hillary Clinton. The world could hardly say it had not been warned. ‘The British are coming!’ yelled Colin Welland, accepting his Oscar for Chariots of Fire in 1982. But few people could have guessed that Jeremy Clarkson would be leading the charge.

What has any of this got to do with theology? Actually quite a lot, for reasons that I might well get into some time. But not today. God save the King.