Many readers of this article will have far more harrowing family stories than mine, but the fate of my father serves to illustrate my point.

At the age of 17 he had good reason for optimism. He had done well at school and had passed exams to enter engineering college. But he was a Jewish boy living in Vienna; and this was 1938. Non-Aryans were suddenly banned from the college. Instead of attending it, he had to present himself each month to the local police station.

Seven decades later the swastikas in his first passport still offer stark testimony to those terrible times.

In the end he was lucky: he and his immediately family were able to leave Austria shortly after Kristallnacht. After serving in the British army during the war, he ended up in London in 1945. Other relatives were less lucky.

My point is that my father survived oppression and found freedom. He was one of tens of millions to do so in the half-century that followed. Today something approaching freedom, liberty and democracy exists almost everywhere in Europe. But, as this autumn’s two big anniversaries remind us – the 70th anniversary of the start of the Second World War, and the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall – these virtues are relatively new to a large part of our continent. Not only did Hitler and Stalin torment much of Europe; home-grown fascists also left their mark on Italy, Spain, Greece and Portugal.

Today, then, we – the survivors of the traumas of the 20th century, and their children – have much to celebrate. Some protest that our liberties are once again under threat, and that too many people in too many countries are content to trade our human rights in return for greater economic freedom. That argument is not wholly ridiculous; but I think of my father and wonder whether the more strident protesters have lost their sense of proportion.

Having set these opening paragraphs in a pan-European context, I fear I am now about to offend some readers. For my argument is that the victory for freedom across Europe has been a victory for British concepts of liberty.

Britain has plainly not been the sole source of these virtues; no sensible person could say that about a continent whose history includes ancient Athens, ancient Rome and the French revolution. But I do claim that Britain’s influence has been dominant, and that far from Europe imposing its human rights rules on Britain (as some British Eurosceptics claim), it is Britain that really imposed its rules on Europe.

In Democracy: 1,000 years in pursuit of British liberty, I chart the evolution of freedom and democracy in Britain. The book is a compendium of speeches, laws, pamphlets, poetry, fiction and satire, with a linking commentary. Two of the more recent extracts are Winston Churchill......