When Edouard Manet's painting Olympia is hung in the Salon of Paris in 1865, it is met with jeers, laughter, criticism, and disdain. It is attacked by the public, the critics, the newspapers.

I may not have mentioned it in my articles before (or maybe I have), but many of my family and friends – including, unfortunately, the more prudish and easily spooked – will know that I am a bit ...