And even by the Auto-Tuned, falsettoed, post-nightclub conventions of contemporary R&B, this is a colossally strange record: Ciara is taxed like never before.

A hired diplomat in Edirne and to the Porte in Constantinople, a military commander in the Austro-Turkish wars, a polyhistor and a learned man.

But the shifting moral tone is perfectly caught in Helen McCrory's polymorphous Phocion, who is mischievously aware of her sexual power and switches from macho snarls when seducing a woman to flirty oeillades when playing with a man.

It's almost as if the urge to washboard is intrinsically human.