Patrick Leigh Fermor reports an innkeeper in Romania telling him that the hendiatris, “Wine, women and song”, was coined by Martin Luther, in his post-Brexit phase. Leigh Fermor saw the full version of it – “Who loves not wine, women and song, remains a fool his whole life long” – in inns in both Germany and Romania on his epic journey, aged 18, in 1933 from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople.

Variations on the same theme are found around the world. The ubiquity of both the sentiment and the form (hendiatris is from the Greek, hen dia trion, “one through three”) is interesting. Like alliteration, its rhetorical power is mesmerising, when used well. Brutus’ “Friends, Romans, Countrymen”, the French revolutionaries’ “Liberty, Fraternity, Equality”, and even St Paul’s rehearsing of the theological virtues, “Faith, Hope and Charity”, would not linger in the mind so tenaciously but for the compelling power of the hendriatis.