We don’t just win at sports, we kill the other team; we demolish them; we devour our opponents. To express our appreciation for a baby’s cuteness, we say we could eat her up. When we have sex, we ravish our lovers, nibble their ears, lick their vulvas, or swallow their cocks. Gleeful, we banquet on flesh.

Pre-revolutionary France was awash with evocative colour nomenclature. Apple green and white stripes, for example, were called 'the lively shepherdess'. Other favoured individual shades included 'indiscreet complaints', 'great reputation', 'stifled sigh', and 'the vapours'.

On page 20 of the album a cotton dress fragment belonging to Mercy Taylor is described as being ‘printed at Primrose’. It is a shaded ombré – the process of colours graduating into one another – fading from the brightest magenta through to a paler shade and cut through at intervals with a wavy stripe in emerald green. If the four inches of fabric