Going overboard

What is it about islands that appeals to little men with big ideas? It’s Corfu I’m thinking about, primarily. Napoleon was obsessed with the place. Kaiser Wilhelm owned a summer palace here, the neoclassical Achilleion, where he installed a huge and hideous statue of Achilles. Can I add George Osborne to the list? Perhaps I’d better not. There’s a far better figure to complete the triumvirate, if that’s the phrase: the sly, off-kilter and phenomenally litigious founder of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard.

Last month, the Daily Telegraph ran an obituary of one John Forte, a former officer in the British Army, who had two claims to fame when it came to Corfu. The first was that he’d revived its tradition of playing cricket, which had lingered since British colonial days. The second was that, in August 1968, he had been honorary vice-consul when Hubbard hove into port in his 320ft former warship, the Scotsman, along with 200 or so of his black-uniformed disciples.