MUCH AS I hope this column, with all its lunacies and vagaries, is part of your monthly culture fix, mine is BBC One’s Sunday evening offering, Antiques Roadshow. A recent episode featured a number of disappointed owners being told that, without actual ‘proof’, their wonderful provenance stories were little more than tantalising ‘might have beens’. A model rowing boat handed down in one family was apparently made by Tsar Peter the Great of Russia when he visited London in 1698, which was possible as it was stylistically correct. With proof, Russian oligarchs would doubtless vie to out-wallet each other to beach the perfect present for that ultimate Tsar Peter-admirer, President Putin. Without proof? A few hundred pounds.
Next up was a multi-tool set wrapped in leather – “the Rolls-Royce DIY set of its day”, the expert proclaimed – again passed down in one family, who knew that it had once belonged to Florence Nightingale. With the requisite ‘proof’ of such
