Squawk, squawk! Can you hear it? The sound of chickens coming home to roost; all those wealthy, powerful men who turn up in the Epstein files, writing their sniggering schoolboy emails about female body parts. “I didn’t know,” they say now. Well, of course they knew. That’s what made Epstein so enticing – a private jet and a private island where, presumably, everything that happened there stayed private. Until now. A rich men’s club where women were playthings and baubles, flown in like Russian caviar or lobster. 

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So much in life is driven by the power of men over women, and art imitates life. Look at opera, populated by a bunch of singing Epsteins and Weinsteins. I’m not sure I can sit through Act Two of Tosca again watching Scarpia’s abuse, however beautiful Puccini’s music may be. I want to shout, “Run away!” to Zerlina when Don Giovanni comes sniffing around on her wedding day. I don’t want the Countess to forgive Count Almaviva so easily in The Marriage of Figaro. I want the Duke in Rigoletto to be beaten up in a back alley...