Over the last few weeks, the ‘Skripal poisoning affair’ has unfolded. The main issue—whodunnit and why?—is something the public won’t know the truth about for some time to come, if ever, making it the perfect vehicle for the pre-existing phobias of various analysts.

In a post-Brexit era of swelling imperial nostalgia and revisionism, the story of Alum Bheg’s skull – a war-trophy from the Indian ‘Mutiny’ of 1857 discovered in a pub in Kent – offers a telling example of how a genuinely nuanced history of the British Empire might be written.

The man Guinean president Alpha Condé likes to compare himself with is none other then Nelson Mandela. And yes, there are similarities.