‘How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman, dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot in the Caribbean by providence, impoverished, in squalor grow up to be a hero and a scholar?” starts the opening number of Hamilton, the hit Broadway musical which arrives in London this month.

Lin-Manuel Miranda’s extraordinary hip-hop history about Alexander Hamilton, “the ten-dollar founding father without a father”, is not just an award-winning show. In America, this story of an immigrant who makes it to the top, with an ethnically diverse cast, has become a symbol of liberal values that provokes contrasting responses. Michelle Obama described it as “the best piece of art in any form I have ever seen in my life” while