Known to be genuinely cheerful, every few months an unseen shadow would nevertheless succumb him, delivering a two-week melancholic stew of resentment and depression.

A small white donkey glimmered into sight, and behind it a milk cart, rattling its cans, and behind that ran a small and ragged piccaninny, a child of perhaps seven years, whose teeth were rattling so loudly they sounded like falling pebbles even across the width of the garden.

The FBI has already started an investigation into any U.S.-based shenaniganry from the Rupert Murdoch-owned media company.

Sea-poppies and ragwort were plants of ill-fame, too.