The French ban on the burkini was summed up by a picture of armed policemen standing over a middle-aged woman on a beach at Nice until she took off her long-sleeved over-shirt (since she wasn’t even wearing a burkini) and revealed her bare arms.

Police across French seaside towns have been enforcing decrees by their mayors, described by one as: “Access to beaches and for swimming is banned to any person wearing improper clothes that are not respectful of good morals and secularism [laïcité].” It came as a surprise to some British readers that French mayors could just make up laws.

It was a bizarre turn of events, none the jollier for taking place a month after 86 men, women and children had been slaughtered by the sea in Nice by a lorry-driver who supported the Islamic State. “Echoes of the Nazis and why this picture fills me with rage – by Sarah Vine,” ran the blurb above the title on the front of the Daily Mail on Thursday last week, next to a photo of the police and shirt-doffing woman. Inside, with a three-page piece, were four more photos of the incident. They reminded Sarah Vine of “photographs of Jewish women being forced to strip by armed, uniformed men during the anti-semitic pogroms in Eastern Europe in World War II”.