THE LOUSE MADE the strongest impression on me, until I walked into a room full of big portraits in oils.

This was at the excellent Charles II exhibition at the Queen’s Gallery in London, a pendant, as Laura Gascoigne suggested here, to the big Charles I show at the Academy.

The louse was a large fold-out engraving in Robert Hooke’s Micrographia, a book depending as much on his draughtsmanship as his microscopy. The star insect in the book is the flea.