After a delay because “ugly” first prototypes sent Renault’s boss into a fury, the new Twingo finally arrived in the showrooms to replace the veteran of 14 years – only it is not to be the sexy little model loved by French, Italian and German women. That car, a two-door, four seat, mini-monospace with semi-circular headlamps which look at some angles like hooded eyes offering sensual pleasures from across a room, has been replaced by one which looks, well, a bit ordinary. As so often, the European Union gets part of the blame.

Through a chance meeting in Prague in the 1970s, Lydie Pearson and Sheila Moody, hitherto unknown to each other, subsequently came to live in the same commune of Puy d’Arnac in the Corrèze. At the time of their first meeting, Lydie’s late husband Kenneth was the resident British Council representative in Prague and, through a mutual Czech friend, Lydie and Sheila were introduced to one another.

When, in a highly symbolic ceremony 14-year-old Marie- Antoinette, the ninth child of the Empress of Austria, was stripped of all her personal possessions, even her pet pug – in short, everything connected with her family and country of origin – and presented with clothes and jewels from the nation of her betrothed, the future Louis XVI, she stepped into a minefield. She was ill equipped for what was to follow: marriage to the Dauphin, a life totally removed from reality in a labyrinth of etiquette and intrigue and, within a few years, accession to the throne of a bankrupt kingdom. Barely literate, she was inexperienced and had neither the intelligence nor the strength of character to see beyond the glamour of a court partying its way to extinction.