Like Churchill, Sir Richard Dannatt, head of the British Army, is preparing to fight them on the beaches. He is not alone. The Norfolk landowner has been promised support from hundreds of angry villagers, appalled by official plans to flood a stretch of East Anglia’s coastline, letting the sea roll into 25 square miles of the Norfolk Broads, drowning six villages, hundreds of homes and thousands of acres of prime farming land. All along the East Coast, local communities are preparing for conflict with the Environment Agency over its plans for “managed retreat” – surrendering low-lying lands to the encroaching sea. At an ever quicker pace, South-East England is sinking, and the agency, appalled at the cost of keeping the sea at bay, has decided it will no longer play Canute.

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