Could our intergenerational conflict be solved by students living with the elderly?

Society is more divided by age today than any other time in history, but is this fuelled by Brexit or the widening generation gulf? A Dutch experiment integrating university students in an elderly care home could be the solution, says David Barnett

Student Sores Duman and Marty Weulink live in harmony at Humanitas (Sores Duman)

As I wrote this, two events of wildly differing importance yet which share a connection were occurring.

The first was that Brexit ministers were beginning to fall like dominoes, beginning with Dominic Raab and continuing on an almost hourly basis throughout the morning. The second – which, admittedly, was on a much more personal level – is that my latest novel has been officially published.

One necessarily swamped the other, of course, in terms of relevance to the population at large. But the two things are inextricably linked, in that my latest book – The Growing Pains of Jennifer Ebert – is essentially about Brexit, and more specifically the generational divide the EU referendum brought into sharp relief.