AL KENNEDY
The nose has it: (from top left) Albert Einstein, the Queen, Nelson Mandela, Victoria Beckham, Meghan Markle, Owen Wilson, Barbara Streisand, Groucho Marx, Barack Obama, Theresa May, Donald Trump and Gerard Depardieu as Cyrano de Bergerac
© WIKIMEDIA COMMONS/
In Nikolai Gogol’s story “The Nose,” a civil servant called Kovalyov wakes one morning to discover his nose is missing; in its place there’s only a smooth, flat space. Without a nose, Kovalyov finds he can’t work, can’t eat, he’s scared even to go outside. As for his girlfriends—well he discovers that noselessness, apart from being a kind of facelessness, seems to imply other, lower, deficits. Worse still, freed from Kovalyov, his nose is swanning around St Petersburg dressed for success in a “gold-braided, high-collared uniform, buckskin breeches, and cockaded hat.”