“... on Capri to create a cult of beauty, staffed by willing Neapolitan waiters. In Locarno, the Baltic Baron Elisar von Kuppfer erected a temple, the Elisarion, to celebrate the worship of the male body, complete with giant murals in pastel colours in which women turned out on closer inspection to be men. A different group of aristocrats with secret lives served ...”

“... and Hasidic superstition. For the feminist Bertha Pappenheim, the vocational schools endowed by Baron Hirsch, which taught Polish and German and thus undermined the use of Yiddish, were ‘strongholds, often conquered in battle, against the defects from which Galician Jewry suffers as if from a hereditary disease’. Two developments gradually put an end to ...”

“... diamond’), Al Taubman and Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis. De Pury was private curator to Baron ‘Heini’ – Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza – then chairman of Sotheby’s Europe, then established Phillips de Pury, which he hoped would ‘turn the auction house duoply that was Sotheby’s and Christie’s into a triumvirate that included ...”

“... a Jazz Age aviator in cravat and huge round goggles; a hairless albino with two heads; a dapper Baron de Charlus-style boulevardier; a shiny and querulous-looking Buddha. Not all the pictures show her, it should be noted, in cross-sex or hermaphroditic guise: in three outdoor photographs, she is seen from above, supine on a beach mat, wearing what appears ...”

“... in Ridley Scott’s celebrated commercial, shot in 1973, on the picturesque slopes of Shaftesbury. Carl Barlow, the youth who featured in the advertisement, underscored by the slow movement of Dvorak’s Symphony No 9, arranged for brass, went on to become a fireman in East Ham. And, presumably, to find himself caught up in the aggravations of the Thatcher ...”

“... stuff up, but can spread their fake news worldwide more effectively than the most powerful press baron in the glory days of newspapers, and be anonymous when they do it. Rusbridger quotes the internet guru Clay Shirky on funding public interest journalism as a social good: ‘Social stuff is how most birthday parties are produced, how most picnics are ...”

“... are broken. Near the end of the trial, before the closing arguments, Pistorius’s older brother, Carl, was involved in a head-on car collision which crushed both his legs below the knee – the link to his brother was glaring – leaving it unclear whether he would live or ever walk again. In fact, he recovered speedily enough to make it into the courtroom ...”