In the Red Rooms of the Louvre in Paris – part of Napoleon III’s maniacal Second Empire regeneration of the city – hangs the gargantuan Coronation of Napoleon (1807) by Jacques-Louis David. It is surrounded by paintings that chart a century of idealism: martyred gavroches, discharged muskets and patriotic oaths. It all converges on the outcome of a self-proclaimed emperor crowning himself in a ceremonial rite he had created: “casting the kingdom old into another mould”, as Andrew Marvell said of Oliver Cromwell.