Ten years ago, England relaxed its laws on the sale of alcohol. Pubs no longer had to call “last orders” at 11 p.m. — they could remain open all night.

Moralists feared the worst. The typical Englishman, after all, is altogether too fond of booze. As Shakespeare’s Iago puts it, “Your Dane, your German, and your swag-bellied Hollander … are nothing to your English … [H]e drinks you with facility your Dane dead drunk; he sweats not to overthrow your Almain. He gives your Hollander a vomit ere the next pottle can be filled.”