The world had 18 months to get used to Donald Trump, before the shock of the election result; it turns out what we weren’t ready for was his apartment. Just days after winning, the president-elect and his would-be British middleman, Nigel Farage, stood beaming together in Trump’s private elevator – a lift so gold, so garish, so glaring, that it could have come with an epilepsy warning. The internet shielded its eyes and began to get the picture.

Shortly before winning the Man Booker Prize 2016, Paul Beatty sat down with Neil Denny at Watersones Piccadilly in London to talk about his novel The Sellout

The candidate that lobbyist and political consultant Paul Manafort advised was not a polished politician. He was prone to outbursts and many questioned whether he had the proper temperament for the presidency. His subsequent campaign took place in a highly-charged media environment, full of barely-concealed threats, brazen displays of unprecedented hostility, routine violations of political and social norms, and many other provocations that appeared to be designed to undermine faith in the electoral process itself.

Britain is gripped by clown fever. But these spooky stories go a long way back