A thirty-ish Peter O’Toole becoming an aged schoolmaster with powdered apple cheeks. I was a child when I saw the remake of Goodbye Mr Chips in 1970, but even then I could see that wrinkly make-up will never wash. More fascinating than the film was watching it in Walter Burley Griffin’s Capitol Theatre in Melbourne. The ceiling’s cunningly layered pleats of multi-faceted fittings were a million triangles softened in an illuminated cloud of pink and rose and yellow hues. It was my first knockout encounter with the style known as Art Deco.

London’s Victoria and Albert Museum is currently hosting a ‘sumptuous’ survey of the period. Quoting curator Ghislaine Wood that the central themes are ‘fashion, glamour, commerce’, Time magazine’s review presses the buttons: Top Hat, ocean liners, Cartier (the scarab brooch), streamlined cocktail shakers and radios, and stepped pyramid skyscrapers …The list evokes a suspension of glittering objects in amber.