It was George Bernard Shaw, by most accounts, who said that “England and America are two countries separated by a common language”. That’s not all they are separated by, as we explained in a headline on an opinion piece about a meeting of European leaders. “The ‘Coalition of the Willing’ summit in Paris proved that the US and Europe are an ocean apart,” it read, causing some of us to wonder whether this geographical detail had previously been in doubt.
To be fair, I often forget where things are, but I think North America has been in the same place for quite a long time, as have we on this side of the Atlantic, so there is no excuse.
