newspapers and James Naughtie isn't taking the EU referendum result very wellnewspapers

There's a telling piece on the BBC News website at the moment by James Naughtie headlined Lessons from history for Europe's future. 

It probably sums up (in an over-elaborate way) how many other BBC reporters are feeling at the moment too.

I read it as one long, sad, bewildered sigh.

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He doesn't exactly disguise his feelings. For him, the "world" has "turned upside down", thanks to the EU referendum result.

Presently in France, he's therefore seeking the consolations of history through reading a magisterial study of the Hundred Years War. 

After comparing the upcoming post-referendum EU summit to a "post-war" peace conference" (some sense of perspective please, Jim?), the former Today presenter goes on to write, "It seems natural to turn to chaotic times [i.e. the Hundred Years War] to feel at home".

(The world turning upside down? Chaos?  A post-war-like summit? Get a grip, Jim!)

He thinks about how if Henry V had just lived a little longer "fate" and "chance" would have seen England and France united, and England playing the role of "a moon" to Paris's "bigger planet". But "fate" and "chance" intervened, and Jim goes on to draw a contemporary parallel...:

Chance. The throw of the dice. The fate of countries that turns on the instant. 

Fearsome mortality, a battle. Or a vote.

Was this vote, when well over 17 million people voted to leave the EU, really a case of 'chance' or 'a throw of the dice'? Isn't that a very dismissive way of alluding to a clear democratic choice? 

"No one...knows where we're heading", he then intones, and despite thinking of Henry V, it doesn't "seem" to him "the moment for the St Crispin's Day speech" (a famous piece of English patriotism). 

And, worse, Marine le Pen is smiling "a lot", so Jim, in Paris, changes the subject with his Parisian friends to football instead.

Fate. Chance. The Somme, And...

...yes, one final, very telling sigh:

But, in Picardy, I might have time to read some more history. 

Funnily enough, there is something about the 15th century that is rather appealing just now.

That's the longest, saddest, most bewildered sigh of all. 

He's not one bit happy about the result of the EU referendum, is he?