"A question from Professor Esmond Wright!" Ritcheson declared. Silence descended. Heads turned toward the celebrated director of the Institute of United States Studies at the University of London, an authority on the loyalists during the Revolution, and still known for his outspoken Tory stands as a former member of Parliament.

The silvery haired, distinguished man with a plastic poppy in his lapel (commemorating the end of World War I) rose to address the company. A brief "First of all I'd like to join in the general adulation over your distinguished talk" led into a series of platitudinous challenges which, the professor alleged, conflicted with Bailyn's remarks. Then, a dizzying, anglophilic puree of revisionism: "Can you really say that this was a 'revolution?' ...And when the call came to Washington to extend the revolution south of its border, to Latin America--the answer was no...So wouldn't it be more useful for historians henceforth to refer to this not as the 'American Revolution' but as a quite natural movement in favor of the independence of the American portion of the British Empire?"

By the time heads had turned back toward Bailyn, he had crossed the stage and once again taken his place behind the lectern. Harvard's historian felt, in fact, that there had been an American Revolution.

"Sorry about that question. Really fine lecture," Wright was overheard to tell Bailyn at the reception in an adjoining room, as Ritcheson whisked the two of them off for a photograph with tall Lord Robbins, an imposingly preserved economist who had been distinguished even in the time of Lord Keynes.

British and Indian waiters glided around the room serving iced American cocktails. Bowls of popcorn, peanuts and potato chips decorated tables. A U.S. history class from the American School in London filed past. Uninitiated visitors to London wondered where to find bonfires--it was Guy Fawkes Day. Long-separated Harvard graduates found each other. The entire American economic history faculty of the prestigious London School of Economics was seen in one place at one time. The Embassy's pay telephone box was found to be out of order. An Arab with a heavy accent wondered aloud whether Bailyn's accent was "Jewish." An American said she thought it was more "Boston."

In the spirit of USIS functions, Americans spread their winning cheer throughout the reception. Small groups of Britishers, chatting around the room, puzzled over the barrage of Harvard references that had come before. At least one group received an American explanation. "You see, in America we have these powerful centers of learning," a self-appointed authority said obvious disapproval. "Their graduates run the whole country." As she explained this "American phenomenon," her listeners had reason to wonder whether she had ever heard of Oxford or Cambridge.

Finally the crowd flowed out the way it had come in, past the formica tables where British guards had searched all parcels for bombs, not far from the awesome portraits that chronicle the ministers and ambassadors from the United States of America to the Court of Saint James, from the time of revolution to the time of the present, from John Adams to Elliot Richardson.