Two footnotes: at dinner, Melba-Te Kanawa admitted to a study of claret and a fondness for Haut Brion: the real Melba was rumoured to be not so much a sophisticated oenophile as something of an old soak, but dedicated professional that she was, it is highly unlikely that she would have touched throat-desiccating alcohol just before singing. And I was unconvinced by Isobel Crawley’s expressed preference for the music of Bartok, which had barely registered in the Britain of 1922 - a douceur for Debussy might have rung a little truer. In other words, Downton Abbey’s cultural pretensions had tripped up once again, leaving the whole episode deliciously ludicrous and emptily improbable.