Talk about Atlantis being a civilisation that existed years ago which was far more advanced than ours, and some will call you a conspiracy theorist. However, there are some facts these sceptics cannot argue with, and that is the number of ancient technologies which we simply cannot replicate.

This is more than arguing about how the pyramids were built; these are inventions and technologies that the best minds of our time do not understand. Here are five, but there are many, many more.

Damascus Steel

This steel was found in many swords—swords that would slice through any other material. They were beyond sharp. Most of the swords found come from the 17th century, and they disappear completely from 1750.

The swords, which were discovered in 1990, were studied extensively by the best minds of the time. In 2023, they were found to contain carbon nanotubes in a swirling pattern. Scientists are sure that this pattern and unique formation of ores were achieved in the forging process, yet to date they have not been able to replicate it.

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The idea that a woman helped write Einstein’s papers has gained ground. It is a concept that some of the greatest minds today find hard to contemplate.

It was an idea suggested in Marie Benedict’s book The Other Einstein. Although marketed as a work of fiction, it was based on fact.

Mileva Maric was Albert Einstein’s first wife. It is suggested that she contributed to some of his biggest theories. Did Einstein plagiarise his wife’s work to achieve success?

Who Is Mileva Maric?

Mileva was a Serbian physicist and mathematician. She was also the only woman at the Zurich Polytechnic in the same year as Einstein, and only the fifth woman accepted to the Mathematics and Physics department.

As a child, she showed exceptional talent for her studies, especially mathematics. Because of her intelligence, she was allowed to enter the all-male Royal Classical School in Zagreb. When she qualified to enter Zurich Polytechnic, she moved to the city, a woman on her own, in a man’s world.

She entered Einstein’s class and fell for him. Love letters of the time sent between the two show their intense relationship. She went on to have his first child out of wedlock: a girl named Lieserl. Mystery surrounds what became of this child; some say she died of scarlet fever, others that she was adopted. After marriage, the couple had two sons, Hans Albert and Eduard.

The couple divorced in 1919.

What did Mileva Contribute?

While studying in Zurich, Mileva took a term off to study in Heidelberg. In a letter dated 20 October 1897, she wrote about her fascination with the relationship between a molecule’s velocity and the distance between them. This topic is highly relevant to Einstein’s studies of Brownian motion, one of the four papers he published in 1905 during his landmark year.

There are doubts about whether Mileva helped him write his four groundbreaking papers in Annalen der Physik.

The fourth of these papers was the basis of his Theory of Relativity. Within the articles, Einstein pays tribute to his friends from the Olympia Academy. This small group of forward-thinking minds met regularly to debate and discuss theories. Along with Einstein, Mileva is mentioned as a member of this Academy.

The Evidence

In recent times, many minds have debated Mileva’s contribution to these theories. It is clear that at the time, theories from a man would have been far better received than from a woman, especially a woman who failed to graduate.

Mileva was pregnant during her finals and failed to reach the academic achievement she should have, even though in previous years she had scores equal to Einstein’s.

A recent documentary claims to have uncovered an original copy of the Theory of Relativity. The paper is signed by both Einstein and Marity. Is Marity a misspelling of Mileva, or perhaps the official Hungarian form of her surname used on official documentation? Abraham Joffe, an alumnus of Zurich Polytechnic Institute, claims to have also viewed this original document.

Letters exist between Mileva and a Serbian friend in which she claims that they had just finished important work that would make her husband famous.

John Stachel, a well-known physicist, argues that the letters referring to this collaboration were written during Einstein’s student days, long before the papers were published. He also points out that while Einstein often used the pronoun “our” rather than “I” when discussing his ideas in personal correspondence, this reflected romantic intimacy rather than concrete scientific co-authorship. This, he claims, supports the view that Mileva was not a co-author of the published theories.

Stachel suggested that letters from Mileva survive that directly respond to those from Einstein. When he speaks of his latest ideas, she gives no response at all. Her letters contain only personal matters or comments related to her Polytechnic coursework.

Stachel writes: In her case, we have no published papers, no letters with serious scientific content, either to Einstein or anyone else, nor any objective evidence of her supposed creative talents. We don’t even have hearsay accounts of her conversations with anyone else that have specific scientific content, let alone claims of reporting her ideas.

In contrast to Stachel’s view, Mileva’s eldest son and relatives remember her working on papers alongside her husband.

One of the most significant clues to these claims may be that Einstein put all the money he made from his Nobel Prize into a fund for Mileva and his two sons. Was he a father who provided for his family, or was he paying dues to a co-author?

Whether Mileva contributed to some of Einstein’s theories remains to be proven.

Einstein was a genius in his own right. Whether he refused to acknowledge his wife’s contribution does not necessarily make him a thief. It may be that his wife inspired him through their lively dinner conversations.

The papers that both parties have left are compulsive reading.

The primary issue remains that Mileva Einstein has been eliminated from mainstream history, like so many women. Very few people know the name of one of the most impressive female physicists of her time.

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One of the greatest mysteries in cinema history did not take place on the big screen; instead, it was the story of the cameras that filmed the first motion pictures. The story has everything you would expect of considerable screen suspense: intrigue, drama, and even possible murder.

Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince is credited as the Father of Cinematography and the inventor of motion pictures. However, it was not always this way; for years, no one knew Le Prince’s name, mainly because the man himself disappeared without a trace.

Some have argued that he committed suicide, unable to deal with the pressure his invention brought about. Others state that the incident is far more sinister and that he was murdered by one of his rivals.

Louis Le Prince

Le Prince was a French artist born in 1841 in Metz, France. His father was a major in the French army. During his childhood, his father’s friend, Louis Daguerre, who invented the daguerreotype, taught the young Le Prince photography and chemistry.

This passion followed him into adulthood, where he studied painting and chemistry in Paris and Leipzig. Having finished his university education, he moved to England. In 1869, he married Elizabeth Whitley, a talented artist.

The couple established the Leeds Technical School of Art, an applied art school. The college became a household name when they started fixing colour photographs to metal and pottery.

It wasn’t long before their work became so well respected that they were commissioned by Queen Victoria and Prime Minister William Gladstone to paint portraits.

Le Prince also liked experimenting with technology and looking for new ways to improve art. He became the first to make a working model capturing motion pictures.

He achieved this breakthrough at his workshop in Leeds.

One month before he was due to reveal his invention to the world, he disappeared.

The First Motion Picture Camera

In the 1880s, Le Prince became interested in cinematic technologies. He started by creating a sixteen-lens camera, applying for a US patent and receiving it in 1888. He built the apparatus in his workshop in Leeds.

On 14th October 1888, he recorded the Roundhay Garden Scene, capturing four family members walking in a garden. On the same day, he filmed a separate sequence featuring his son Adolphe playing the accordion. Both sequences were filmed using an improved single-lens camera.

Both Thomas Edison and the Lumière brothers have dominated the headlines for inventing equipment which made moving images possible. However, evidence shows that Le Prince preceded their inventions by several years.

The machine that Le Prince designed utilised paper-backed strip film to capture moving pictures. Although relatively primitive by today’s standards, his machine essentially started modern cinema.

Missing

Le Prince, having secured his patents, was preparing to travel to the US to publicly unveil his invention. Before travelling to America, though, he returned to France to visit his brother in Dijon.

He took a later train to Paris, missing his scheduled meeting with friends in the city. He was never seen again. His brother at the Dijon station was the last person to see Le Prince alive.

Both the French police and Scotland Yard took on extensive searches. The family also followed their own lines of enquiry. Unfortunately, all efforts were in vain, as he was never found.

Theories

With any disappearance without clear answers, theories abound, though none have been substantiated. The main theory strenuously believed by his wife, Elizabeth Whitley, was that Le Prince was assassinated by Edison or an accomplice as part of an aggressive patent war.

Others suggested he disappeared on the orders of his family and died in Chicago in 1898, claiming his family persuaded him to vanish after discovering he was gay.

In 1890, a drowned man was pulled out of the Seine, bearing a striking resemblance to Le Prince. However, this photo only came to light in 2003 when it was rediscovered in the Paris Police archives.

People have since speculated that he took his own life after failing to get his projector working perfectly and being overwhelmed with debt. Others have claimed the man pulled from the river was far too short to be Le Prince.

Patent War

In 1894, Edison was credited as the US inventor of motion pictures. The Lumiere Brothers were credited in France. They hosted the first commercial exhibition of motion picture films in 1895

Le Prince was declared legally dead in 1898. Shortly after, his elder son Adolphe was called as a key witness in litigation against Edison brought by the American Mutoscope Company.

The court case was unsuccessful in establishing Le Prince’s commercial priority, and in a tragic twist, Adolphe was found dead in New York in 1901. Many years later, Le Prince was finally recognised for his true contributions to motion pictures.

Whether his disappearance was an accident, an assassination, or something else, no one will ever know for certain. Nevertheless, the mystery of Louis Le Prince’s disappearance fascinates historians to this day.

The first time I heard about the World Fairs was when I read Erik Larson’s book, The Devil in the White City. I was initially drawn to the book by my fascination with HH Holmes, but I soon became captivated by the World Fairs.

My fascination with Victorian England led me to discover The Great Exhibition, one of the earliest and grandest fairs.

Today, we’ll explore three other Victorian fairs that introduced us to many inventions, many of which are now common household items.

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When Queen Victoria came to the throne, she was a naive girl. Her mother had shielded her entirely from the harsh realities of life. Her first Prime Minister was Lord Melbourne, a man with whom she quickly developed an incredibly close relationship.

The bond they shared bears a great resemblance to the later pairing of Queen Elizabeth II and Winston Churchill. Melbourne was Victoria’s friend, confidant, and trusted advisor. Both young queens relied heavily on their first Prime Ministers to navigate the pressures of the crown.

Lord Melbourne helped shape the monarch that Victoria would eventually become. Naturally, this intrigued me. I wanted to look deeper into his past. I already knew from various biographies of the young queen that Melbourne was a widower who had tragically lost his son.

What I did not expect to find as I dug into his domestic life was a story completely dominated by his wife. She was arguably even more fascinating than he was. Furthermore, she possessed a strange, tentative connection to one of my absolute favourite books: Frankenstein.

This is the story of Lady Caroline Lamb, the woman who would marry into the Melbourne title; a soul never content with life.

Lady Caroline

Caroline was born on 13th November 1785. She was the only child of Frederick Ponsonby, the 3rd Earl of Bessborough, and Henrietta Spencer. Their marriage was notoriously unhappy. This fractured domestic environment probably shaped Caroline’s unique, unpredictable personality.

From her earliest years, Caroline refused to be conventional. Peers described her as volatile, intense, and deeply temperamental. She defied the strict gender boundaries of her era, routinely wearing trousers and riding horses bareback across open fields.

In 1802, she debuted to high society’s prospective bachelors. The elite nicknamed her the “Fairy Queen”. It was during this season that she caught the eye of William Lamb, the man we know today as Lord Melbourne. Unfortunately, William was only a second son at the time. Lacking status and fortune, he was not permitted to propose. Then, fate intervened.

William Lamb

When William’s elder brother, Peniston, died unexpectedly, William’s financial and social stature increased overnight. He was now the heir. At the end of the traditional period of mourning, he proposed to Caroline, and the couple were wed on 3rd June 1805.

Their marriage was never destined to be smooth sailing. The chaos began at the wedding itself. Caroline threw a violent temper tantrum at the reception, forcing staff to escort her away from her own guests.

The couple would go on to have one son, Augustus, who survived infancy. Augustus was born with severe learning difficulties; mentally, he never progressed past the age of a seven-year-old. He passed away in 1836 at the age of twenty-nine.

Long before his death, however, the marriage had eroded. Records show the couple were living largely separate lives as early as 1810.

Lord Byron

For those who know the history of Gothic literature, Lord Byron was the infamous poet staying near Mary Shelley in Switzerland when she conceived Frankenstein. Byron was a man who cared nothing for the sanctity of marriage. He found it incredibly easy to draw the restless Caroline into a passionate affair.

Byron was not Caroline’s first extramarital indiscretion. That title belonged to Sir Godfrey Webster, though that brief liaison lacked the consuming fire of her next relationship. During her time with Byron, the couple went so far as to perform a mock marriage ceremony. Caroline completely committed herself to the poet, conveniently ignoring the fact that she already had a husband.

When Caroline first met Byron, he had just become an overnight celebrity following the publication of Childe Harold in 1812. She pursued him relentlessly. While Byron initially revelled in the intense attention, he quickly grew exhausted by her obsessive, public behaviour. The advice of an unusual confidante compounded his exhaustion.

The End of the Affair

In a strange twist of history, Byron was intimate friends with William’s mother, Elizabeth, the Lady Melbourne of that era. Operating with a distinctly cynical view of marriage during the late Georgian period, Elizabeth’s own life was scandalous; rumours persist regarding the true paternity of her children. Regardless of her own morals, she conspired directly with Byron to end his affair with her daughter-in-law.

You might assume she did this to protect her son William, who had chosen to wait out the scandal. You would be wrong. Many historians believe she broke up the affair purely so she could take Caroline’s place in Byron’s bed.

Whatever the ultimate truth, the rejection devastated Caroline. Her mental health spiralled into a dangerous decline. She became utterly consumed by Byron, tracking him down at his London rooms and bombarding him with frantic letters.

On 5th July 1813, she encountered Byron at a high-society ball for the first time since the breakup. Overwrought with emotion, she picked up a broken glass bottle and publicly slashed her own arms. Polite society was horrified by the display and promptly shunned her.

Novelist

Following this highly public breakdown, family members suggested she be sent away to the countryside to recover. Instead, Caroline played one final, dramatic card: she wrote a scandalous novel based entirely on her affair with Byron, titled Glenarvon.

Published anonymously in 1816, Glenarvon became an immediate bestseller.

It did not take long for high society to decode the characters and identify the author. Outraged by the exposure, the aristocracy completely cast her out. No one would associate with her, except for William. Remarkably, her husband stood faithfully by her through the entire social ruin.

Till Death Us Do Part

When news reached Caroline in 1824 that Byron had died in Greece, she collapsed into a hysterical fever. She smashed furniture in her grief and galloped wildly on horseback through the family park. Doctors resorted to heavy doses of laudanum and brandy to quiet her frayed nerves. Through it all, William remained at her side, caring for her.

Ultimately, her volatile behaviour took an unsustainable toll on William’s peace and his rising political career. The couple officially separated in 1825. William left Caroline behind at the country estate while he relocated to London to focus on parliament.

As the years advanced, Caroline grew noticeably calmer. Observers noted that she finally seemed to develop a genuine, quiet fondness for her husband. In October 1827, her health failed as she developed severe dropsy.

In January 1828, realising the end was near, she sent for William. He rushed to her side, and she passed away with him present on the 26th of January. Her official cause of death was severe oedema, brought on by years of heavy self-medication and chronic alcoholism.

William Lamb went on to inherit the title of Lord Melbourne, eventually becoming Prime Minister and the young Queen Victoria’s closest mentor. He died on 24th November 1848 at his family home, following a painful physical decline after a major stroke.

He spent his final years isolated at Brocket Hall, largely forgotten by the political world and cut off from Queen Victoria; a lonely retirement that deeply saddened him.

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The race was on to map the world. The Victorian era saw the British Empire expand, and much of the world was mapped. One area remained undiscovered, though. That was the North West Passage.

The Franklin Expedition hoped to map this passage along the top of North America. They wanted to find a way to travel directly from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast. Many expeditions had failed. But the trip backed by the British government and led by Sir John Franklin would be different. Or would it?

HMS Erebus and Terror

Sir John Barrow, Second Secretary of the Admiralty, conceived the mission. He took two of the finest ships, the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror. Both had been Navy bomb vessels converted for this type of exploration. He kept their full sailing rigs but also equipped both with coal-powered steam engines and screw propellers for extra power.

Both ships had iron sheeting reinforcing their hulls, a propeller that retracted in the ice, and steam engines. They also had futuristic technology. This included a water purification unit, one of the first cameras, and an insulated diving suit. Lastly, they carried two inventions to improve the lives of the crew exponentially: internal heating and canned food.

The task was then to find someone to lead the mission. Several applied. Two who were deemed unfit to lead the mission were given individual Captain roles on the ships. The group eventually settled on Sir John Franklin to lead both vessels. Franklin was a veteran of two previous Arctic expeditions. He had his critics, but overall, public opinion was high for a successful mission.

Lastly, fully equipped with 134 recruited crew members, the two ships set sail on 19th May 1845.

Stromness

The two ships were flanked by two tugs to carry additional coal and an additional supply ship. As they entered the North Sea, the challenge of the voyage was realised. They hit a horrendous storm. Franklin would not turn back. The tugs turned back, but the Erebus, the Terror, and the supply ship reached Stromness on 31st May.

The ships needed supplies. However, the town did not trade until Monday, so the ships sat in port. The sailors enjoyed some downtime, although Franklin banned drinking.

The weather eventually died down. On 3rd June, the two ships and the supply ship sailed into the Atlantic. Once the convoy reached Disko Bay in Greenland, the support vessel left the two large ships. A couple of the men who had fallen ill returned with it, reducing the total crew to 129.

Towards the end of July, two separate whaling ships saw and interacted with the two vessels. This was the last time either of the ships or any of the crew would be seen, sparking a mystery of what happened to the Franklin Expedition that has endured for centuries.

Missing

Most in England expected to hear from the expedition in one to two years. None more so than Lady Franklin, a close friend of Charles Dickens, who was waiting for news of her husband.

When the expedition failed to report, most in Parliament presumed the crews had perished. Lady Franklin would not take this as an answer. Along with Dickens, who wrote many articles, she lobbied to have a search mission sent for the two ships.

In 1859, Sir Leopold McClintock sailed out to search for the Franklin expedition. McClintock had been a favourite to lead the original voyage but had been persuaded by his wife that the mission was too dangerous. However, he could not say no to rescuing his friend John Franklin.

There was no sign of either ship. However, the search team found two stone-built cairns on King William Island. In them, they found two handwritten notes.

What Happened to the Franklin

From the notes they found and subsequent exploration, it appears that the two ships became stuck in the ice. The year they travelled, the North West Passage was particularly cold and the ice floes larger than average. The year also boasted a cold summer, causing few of the ice floes to melt. The two ships became stuck and then waited for a summer thaw that never came.

In the spring of 1847, the party travelled across the ice to Point Victory and deposited the written record into the cairns. They then returned later to the notes to add to their story, stating that John Franklin had died in June 1847.

Trapped in ice and drifting south, Captain Crozier abandoned ship on 22nd April 1848.

Weakened from starvation and scurvy, 105 surviving men had fled across the land to find civilisation, dying en route. Very few bodies have ever been recovered from the expedition. However, those who have, with modern technology, may tell a different story as to the decline of the men.

Modern Exploration

Few bodies have ever been found of the crew; however, those that have have been the subject of speculation in modern exploration. Testing the bodies, scientists found that all had a high level of lead in their blood. Further investigation pointed to the revolutionary tinned food that had been stored on the ships.

The Franklin Expedition was one of the first to carry tinned food. However, these had been made at speed, and the solder that had been used to produce the tins leaked into the food, causing many of the crew to become ill with lead poisoning.

Following this conclusion, the team looking into the exhibition discovered the ships almost perfectly intact in the ice. HMS Erebus was discovered in 2014, and HMS Terror in 2016. It is hoped that the ships will contain more answers to what happened to the Franklin Expedition and the men who set sail over 150 years ago.

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It would be an understatement to say that the British love tea. This was as true in Victorian London as it was during the Second World War, when Winston Churchill had severe reservations about rationing it.

The problem the Victorian government had with this tea drinking was the money it was costing them to buy it. Tea was a Chinese import and, along with silk and porcelain, could only be purchased from the Chinese government who would accept nothing but silver as payment.

Vast amounts of British silver were leaving the country, and very little would return, as China had much of what it needed to sustain itself. Diplomatic missions failed. The Qing Dynasty maintained that they needed nothing the British were selling.

The British needed a solution quickly. What could they possibly sell that the Chinese wanted more than anything? The solution was easy, but horrific: the British Empire became drug lords.

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The Irish Potato Famine was the worst in Europe during the 19th century. Had the British government acted differently, it is without question that they could have saved lives.

The famine not only expl…

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America has been unlucky enough to have four Presidents assassinated, each with its own traumatic story. There have also been several attempts on others. When I wrote the story of James A. Garfield’s assassination for my article last Wednesday, the thought struck me that I could not think of a British Prime Minister who had been assassinated.

History books show that although we have several famous Prime Ministers who have had attempts on their lives, only one has ever been killed. His name is largely forgotten in history. This is the story of Spencer Perceval.

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When we talk about presidential assassinations, we talk about Lincoln and JFK. Some might also mention the many failed attempts on Trump, but few mention James A. Garfield.

Garfield was a huge loss to…

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The SS Sultana is the deadliest shipwreck in US history, claiming more lives than the Titanic. Yet, it remains largely lost to history. This obscurity is primarily due to the timing of the disaster; it occurred on 27 April 1865, while the nation was still reeling from the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.

The newspapers of the day were concentrated on the pursuit of his assassin, John Wilkes Booth. Consequently, the death of over a thousand former prisoners of war sank into obscurity. No one was ever held responsible for the incompetence that caused these horrific deaths.

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When the tragic accident happened with the Titan in 2023, I remember thinking to myself: what made these people get into what was nothing short of a bean tin to travel to the bottom of the ocean?

The …

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Robert Peel is well known for his forty-year political career. His time is associated with some of the most remarkable political moves that changed the very character of the government.

His achievements include remodelling the country’s currency, improving the executive in Ireland, and redesigning the criminal justice system in Britain. One of his greatest achievements, which is rarely mentioned, was the meetings he held weekly with Queen Victoria, who was initially less than friendly.

During his first term, he replaced Lord Melbourne, a Prime Minister with whom Queen Victoria had a very close relationship and on whom she relied for advice in her early years. It was a similar relationship to that which Churchill later had with Queen Elizabeth II. While Queen Victoria came to accept and even admire Peel, their early relationship was rocky to say the very least.

This great career would be cut tragically short when a freak accident took his life.

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The weather was bright on the day The Great Exhibition opened. All the dignitaries gathered to catch a glimpse of Queen Victoria and Albert; this was the culmination of many late nights for Albert.

Th…

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The famous Library of Alexandria, Egypt, was one of the most important repositories of knowledge in the ancient world. Built in the fourth century B.C., it flourished for some six centuries, serving as the cultural and intellectual centre of the ancient Hellenistic world.

It was rumoured to contain half a million papyrus scrolls, the largest collection of manuscripts in the ancient world, including works by Plato, Aristotle, Homer, Herodotus, and many others.

Some of the most brilliant minds of the period worked, studied, and taught at the library, which formed part of the research institute known as the Alexandrian Museum, or Mouseion (the “shrine of the Muses”).

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Some great thinkers considered Atlantis a fictional island Plato had made up to teach philosophy, whilst others consider that he based it on a real place lost to history. There are even mentions of i…

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A bitter winter chill gripped London on the day Victorian skaters flocked to the ice. The lake sat in the heart of Regent’s Park, a fashionable destination where the gentry gathered for an afternoon of exercise. However, disaster struck on 15th January 1867. The ice suddenly gave way, plunging hundreds of people into twelve feet of lethal, icy water.

Heavy traditional dress and a lack of immediate rescue equipment hindered the victims, turning the incident into one of the most haunting weather-related tragedies in London’s history. Remarkably, this was not the first warning sign. Just the day before, twenty-one people had fallen through the ice similarly. Despite the narrow escape of the previous day, the frozen surface remained crowded.

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At the moment, where I live, we have an unprecedented number of meningitis cases. It is all anyone talks about. The anxiety hangs heavy in the air, making it easy to imagine what it must have been li…

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Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, later the Marquise de Pompadour, was far more than a mere footnote in the romantic history of King Louis XV. Born into a family marred by financial scandal and raised under a fortune-teller’s prophecy that she would one day “win the heart of a King,” her ascent was a masterclass in calculated ambition and rigorous preparation.

Educated by the finest tutors in the arts, philosophy, and performance, she entered the French court not just as a beauty, but as a woman of intellect and charm. Her entry into Versailles in 1745 sparked a 20-year reign of influence that redefined the role of a royal mistress. While her physical relationship with Louis XV was relatively brief, her position as his most trusted advisor endured until she died in 1764.

While she is often remembered for her patronage of the arts and her legendary salons, it was her transition from the King’s lover to his “Prime Minister” in all but name that remains her most significant legacy.

The Political Genius of Madame de Pompadour

By 1750, the physical relationship between Pompadour and Louis XV had ended due to her failing health. In any other era, this would have signalled her exile from Versailles; instead, Pompadour pulled off a feat of political survival unparalleled in French history. She made herself indispensable as a statesman and advisor to the King.

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Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson was better known in history as the Marquise de Pompadour. She remains one of the most polarising and fascinating figures ever to grace the halls of Versailles. While the pal…

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