* Causing the blood ailment bilharzia, which British soldiers working on the Yangtze, and on the Nile, liked to call ‘Billy Harris’.

* Particularly in Wuhan, where students committed the ultimate heresy by demonstrating with banners praising Chiang Kai-shek.

* The guard who gave Mao the news he did not want to hear was soon removed from the palace staff in disgrace and vanished into obscurity. His colleague, who had both betrayed him and lied to Mao, was eventually promoted.

* At the time of the revolution's beginnings Sun had been fund-raising in America: he read news of the storming of the Wuchang fort in a Denver newspaper while he was en route to Kansas City.

† He reigned again nominally for twelve days in 1917, when a short-lived coup restored him. In 1932 the Japanese installed him as the head of their puppet-government of Manchukuo, but he was swept off to Siberia when the Russians routed the Japanese Army in Manchuria. He was later returned to China, was imprisoned and ‘re-educated' by the Communists, and died peacefully in Beijing in 1967, having spent his remaining years working humbly as a gardener.