"If the golden toilet in situ had looked beautiful and perfect and majestic and untainted, this was the total opposite," Mr Hare said. "This was brutalised, smashed up. This is a palace. Palaces don't get smashed up". When the palace reopened a day later, the controversy was addressed with a theatrical flourish.

A gang has been convicted over the theft of a £4.8m gold toilet from an art exhibition at Blenheim Palace. Thieves smashed their way in and ripped out the functional toilet, hours after a glamorous launch party at the Oxfordshire stately home in September 2019.