Cambridge, late 1940s: after the war my grandfather, Geoffrey Curran, hung up his RAF wings to study ceramics. In the late 1940s he set up the Fen Pottery in Godmanchester, near Cambridge. The individual officiating at the opening ceremony (sadly no surviving pictures) was the Emperor Haile Selassie, in England on an informal visit. He befriended my grandfather after his restoration to the throne in 1941 and the two men stayed in touch. My mother, then small, thought it quite normal for my grandfather’s wartime friend to arrive in a black Bentley flying the standard of the Ethiopian Emperor, the Lion of Judah. Again, she thought it normal that the lithe, elegant passenger should emerge from the Bentley wearing a dark blue cloak clasped with an imperial ruby.