Thomas Piketty’s 753-page book “Capital in the Twenty-First Century”, published in 2013, sold 2.5 million copies worldwide and helped put inequality on the global agenda. But his latest, the even thicker “Capital and Ideology”, may prove still more influential.

People liked the gregarious charismatic Italian guy trying to grow pots of basil in the wind-swept chill of rural Lancashire. And Gennaro liked the caravan park because it was a good place to live quietly. It was a good place to hide from the truth written in blood on the streets of Naples.