Rosa Lyster

To be in or even near Bayreuth is to have Wagner drilled into your consciousness. The festival lasts for a month, consisting exclusively of repeat performances of his operas, and everything in the town is oriented towards him. Wagner’s face is everywhere, on busts and billboards and flyers for hair salons, staring down from ads for Pilates studios with that off-puttingly candid look in his eye and the trace of hysteria about his pressed lips.

Here, in an arena where the Sugababes recently performed, is a crowd bursting into applause as a spaniel steadfastly ignores a rabbit decoy streaking across the astroturf. Here are the genial announcers saying ‘bitch’ over and over: obedience bitch, limit bitch, postgraduate bitch, this magnificent young bitch from Venice, this famous bitch from America.

Advance-fee scams – sometimes called ‘Nigerian prince scams’, although they mostly originate in other countries – have become a hackneyed example of online fraud. But Blay-Miezah and his varyingly complicit associates managed to keep the con going for almost twenty years, extracting hundreds of millions from investors, despite warnings from a number of prominent people, including Henry Kissinger and Shirley Temple.

A thief and her three accomplices forced their way into the library of a country house, where a rich, elderly couple were listening to music on the gramophone. Waving their assault rifles, they screamed at Sir Alfred and Lady Clementine Beit to lie face down on the floor. The leader, who spoke with a strong French accent, instructed her accomplices to start with the Goya above the mantelpiece, a portrait of a beautiful young actress looking out from beneath slightly worried brows.