In July 2016 the bigoted troll Milo Yiannopoulos, a British darling of the American far right, was banned from Twitter after encouraging a torrent of racist abuse at Leslie Jones, a black actor who starred in the remake of Ghostbusters. In one example he branded her “barely literate”. A few months later it emerged that Threshold Editions, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, had given Yiannopoulos, 33, who calls feminism “cancer” and Donald Trump “Daddy”, a $255,000 book deal. “I met with top execs … earlier in the year and spent half an hour trying to shock them with lewd jokes and outrageous opinions,” he said. “I thought they were going to have me escorted from the building – but instead they offered me a wheelbarrow full of money.”

When Greek Prime Minister Georgios Papandreou visited Washington in 1964, he made no secret to President Lyndon Johnson of his displeasure with the US-backed proposal to partition Cyprus. The Greek ambassador later told Johnson that “no Greek government could accept such a plan.” The American president replied: “Fuck your parliament and your constitution. America is an elephant, Cyprus is a flea. Greece is a flea. If these two fellows continue itching the elephant, they may just get whacked by the elephant’s trunk, whacked good…. If your prime minister gives me talk about democracy, parliament, and constitution, he, his parliament, and his constitution may not last very long.”

Griffin Timmerman, six, is a runner. Given the opportunity, the small, lively boy, who has autism and prefers to play on his own, would just keep going. He once ran into the road; this is one of the reasons why his family moved out of Muncie, Indiana, to the country, giving him more space and free rein for his energy.

“Kings were put to death long before 21 January 1793,” wrote Albert Camus, referring to Louis XVI’s execution after the French revolution. “But regicides of earlier times and their followers were interested in attacking the person, not the principle, of the king. They wanted another king, and that was all.”