“Romanticism,” wrote the critic Geoffrey Scott, “ . . . idealises the distant, both of time and place; it identifies beauty with strangeness. . . . It is always idealistic, casting on the screen of an imaginary past the projection of its unfulfilled desires. Its most typical form is the cult of the extinct.”

He might have added that it is profoundly undemocratic. Take, for example , “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” (is it the third Harry Potter film? or the fourth?). The young students at Hogworts are clearly different from you and me - for one thing, they can suspend the laws of physics at will. Can you? Do you know anybody who can? Me neither.

The word these cadet wizards have for non-wizards is enough like “mugs” to make me think they might mean more or less the same thing, maybe even a term of contempt.

It’s easy to see why adults enjoy Harry and urge the tales onto young readers. They are very sophisticated, with clever plays on words -- “Give us a curse,” coaxes Professor Moody (Brendan Gleeson), as one might say “Give us a kiss.” In fact, all the visual slapstick notwithstanding, it is hard to imagine viewers under, say, 16 getting more than a tiny fraction of the jokes and puns with which the dialogue sparkles.

Harry himself is clearly a king manqué, a combination Dink Stover and the Student Prince -- a decent, modest chap, always stepping backwards into the limelight, reluctantly saving the day for the old school.

Don’t let the contemporary, postmodern references fool you: this is very much an Edwardian prep school adventure at heart. The introduction of rock and roll, during the ball scene, was jarring, and possibly a misstep. The prevailing tone is a cross between an Edwardian prep school and Dracula’s castle.