There were a lot of pictures of Ronald Reagan in the newspapers this week, and it felt a little weird. It’s been almost a quarter of a century since the president left the White House and close to a decade since he died, and I have grown less accustomed to his face.

It was a blast from the past. There again was the Hollywood smile, the Windsor knot, the pompadour and, in every image, his trusty comrade in ideological arms from across the ocean, Margaret Thatcher, the former British prime minister who died on Monday aged 87.

On this side of the Atlantic, the death of Thatcher inevitably brought back memories of Reagan. Over here, the Gipper and the Iron Lady go together (to quote the words of Grease, the nostalgic 1978 movie-musical that signalled the turn towards conservatism). Theirs was a common era.