David: If the threat of flooding in eastern England is due to global warming, then global warming’s been going on an awful long time.

One of the most vivid memories of my childhood in the mid-1950s is the wrecked houses and holiday cabins around Skegness and Hunstanton on that same North Sea coast, where the Derbs took their annual seaside vacation. The damage was caused by the terrible floods of 1953. The locals used to tell you: “The tide came in, but it didn’t go out. Then it came in again…” Hundreds of people died.