Brexit is about to happen. But Britain will remain inalienably part of Europe. The national myths, memories and mindsets of Britons, Portuguese, Greeks and Poles - and all those in between - are largely composed of the same sentiments. There are differences, chiefly historic and geographic, but these are massively outweighed by what we have in common. A narrow majority of Britons - like many French, Italians and others - do not realise that the instinctive attitudes they take for granted in their daily lives are the outcome of Europe’s rich and diverse history. No mere political instrument can abolish this shared cultural heritage: Greek philosophy, Roman empire, Christianity, Vikings, empirical science, the Renaissance, double-entry book-keeping, the Enlightenment, the nation-state, classical music, heavy industry, global empire (and its concomitant racism), two world wars and one cold war, democracy, narrative story-telling, capitalism, the idea of self-improvement, socialism, Romanticism, Modernism, pop music, the limited liability company, post-modernism, football, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, tolerance for minority views, the mixed economy, the welfare state, binary computing