My friend Phil Coppell, a Liverpool Blue Badge Tourist Guide, tells me that he took Ray Davies a member of the English rock band The Kinks on a Beatles tour some years ago. He queued up and paid for his ticket like everyone else and, during the tour, mentioned that he had originally set his song Waterloo Sunset in Liverpool but the line ‘Mersey Sunset’ did not scan and he moved it to London. He had always had a soft spot for Liverpool and said that whenever The Kinks played at the Cavern or other venues they always had a great reception.

The Mayflower story has an almost mythological status in American history, particularly in the northeast of America where I grew up. Unfortunately, the story of Plymouth Colony traditionally has been told from the perspective of the Mayflower sailors. In fact, a sophisticated Native American society had long been established in Patuxet before English settlers claimed this land and renamed it Plymouth.