"A few years ago I was walking along the coast with my brother in the scruffy English seaside town where we grew up, arguing about What It Means To Be British," writes AFP's Paris-based correspondent Katy Lee.

"It's obvious!" I said. "Being British is about being tolerant. We're a country made up of different communities, and that's something we celebrate."

"Today, bleary-eyed after working through the night on AFP’s English desk in Paris on the Brexit referendum,  shell-shocked from the result, I’m wondering what I was thinking when I came up with that sunshiny view of a happy, multicultural Britain."