Justin Marozzi

Let’s dispense with the obvious question first. Are they common? While there’s a clear temptation to consult Nicky Haslam on such matters, I don’t think I can be bothered. Not least because first, I am a Prusso-Italian immigrant, second, I was born in Essex and third, I adore fridge magnets. We should be honest and admit that, like everything in life, they are signifiers. The aim is to show our friends how cultured, travelled, well-read, ironic and amusing we are. They are our lives writ in ceramic. Where to begin? One of my favourite magnets, designed to strike fear and dread into any intruder, dates back to Iraq circa 2004: ‘Caution Stay 100 metres back or you will be shot.’ No punctuation, not even an exclamation mark!

When Russian dissidents were bundled off into exile under the tsars, they were sent to Siberia, the ‘prison without a roof’, and disappeared from society, never to be seen again. Many residents of Norfolk, where the King has exiled his brother, Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, will be hoping he follows the same route. ‘There may be a certain thrill about having him, like presenting Liz Truss in your sitting room’ Norfolk likes to call itself a ‘royal county’, as the Visit Norfolk website proudly proclaims. Sandringham, the family’s private home, is well known. But the royal connection pre-dates Queen Victoria’s purchase of the country retreat for her son Albert in 1862 by almost 800 years.

With a new history of slavery and the slave trade in the Islamic world just published, I am under strict instructions not to make any fatwa-related jokes. The Holy Trinity, if I can mix my faith metaphors for a moment, of publisher, agent and wife have advised me strongly against it. ‘No jokes about fatwas, please,’ were my wife’s exact words ahead of an appearance at Chalke History Festival. ‘No one finds them funny.’ I disagree. They can be extremely funny. But on balance it may be wisest to err on the side of caution.

In 1990, an exotic Swiss-Canadian teenager of purportedly Habsburgian lineage descended on Cambridge in a cloud of cashmere. His wardrobe was unfeasibly organised, shelf after shelf of cashmere arrayed in all the hues of the rainbow. We regarded him as a thing of wonder. In those days most of us British undergraduates were deeply unsophisticated, many of us impoverished. We were just about graduating from high-street polyester to Scottish lambswool. Cashmere was unheard of. Life moves on, and who today hasn’t indulged in a spot of cashmere? My wife is addicted to the stuff – jumpers, cardigans, polo necks, gloves, scarves – good God, the scarves. These days cashmere is everywhere. Even Uniqlo regularly knocks it out at sub-£100 prices.