The grisly death of an Old Harrovian businessman in the Lucky Holiday hotel opened the way for the dizzying rise of China’s supreme leader Xi Jinping. It allowed Xi to sweep aside enemies and build a power base to rival that of Chairman Mao. In the grand tradition of Chinese opera, Neil Heywood seems to have been poisoned with cyanide in 2011 at the behest of his lover, the Lady Macbethian wife of an aspiring communist leader, Bo Xilai. The wife, Gu Kailai, and Bo are in jail, having confessed.

The hit job made British headlines at the time, but was never quite put into context. Heywood, who was the tutor and financial adviser of Bo’s son, grew too close to the boy’s mother —