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I ONCE nearly burned down the Smithsonian’s natural history museum in Washington DC. This was many years ago, when scholars were allowed to smoke pipes while studying the collections kept hidden in the vaults. Indeed, scholars were almost expected to smoke a pipe. Foolishly, I had tapped mine out into a bin full of bits of paper when it wasn’t really dead. A janitor with a good sense of smell saved my reputation, not to mention most of the national collections of the US. Had it been otherwise, I doubt very much whether I would have been permitted to rejoin my own institution in London: the…