Publicity stunts, when they truly go awry, can be fatal. On September 15, 1830, at an event to mark the opening of the Liverpool to Manchester railway, William Huskisson, former president of the Board of Trade and MP for Liverpool, was run over and killed by one of Stephenson’s Rockets when he alighted to say hello to the Duke of Wellington. When Jeremy Corbyn reflects on his own publicity stunt involving a train he can at least be assured that it could have been worse, although not by much.

In The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Walter Benjamin wrote that the photograph had robbed the work of art of its aura. The incident on the 11 o’clock train from London