A few weeks before she died, Eva Peron rode next to her husband for his second inauguration as President of Argentina. Her cervical cancer, it is said, had rendered her so weak, that she was standing inside a kind of cage made of plaster and wire to support her frail limbs. She weighed little more than 5.6 stone (36 kg).

At least, that was the official story. But now a neurosurgeon at Yale University Medical School, Daniel Nijensohn, has uncovered new evidence that suggests quite a different tale – a sordid political scandal that never made it into Andrew Lloyd Webber’s best-selling musical. As he puts it in his new paper for Neurosurgical Focus: “In addition to pain and sorrow, the story is full of lies, deceit, secrets, and misinformation.” According to Nijensohn’s theory, the man beside Evita on the parade had been responsible for her rapid decline – by forcing her to have a lobotomy.