Everything we thought we knew about Göring is true, and more besides. He had a huge toy train set – with dive-bombing planes. He wore gaudy uniforms and medals – and togas, jewelled sandals, red boots with gold spurs, rouge, nail varnish and permed, peroxided hair. A penniless morphine addict in 1923, he became Reichsmarschall, one higher than field-marshal, and lived in palaces surrounded by looted paintings – though the Vermeer was a van Meegeren forgery. Chief Reich huntsman, he had a lion strolling about indoors. lmpotent, Göring had a daughter, and fired Julius Streicher for publishing that it was by artificial insemination. At Archway, we would be lost without Göring, featured in our leaflets on a cloud saying 'The Luftwaffe couldn't destroy London, but wait for Bottomley's motorways!' Taken prisoner in 1945 Göring aptly said 'Twelve years … a good run for my money'.

Hermann Göring's father was governor of Namibia, and there is still a Göringstrasse in Windhoek. He spent his boyhood in the castle of his god father, Hermann von Epenstein, a rich Austrian Jewish doctor and lover of Göring's mother. Irving's unbelievably thorough research explodes part of the legend, but Göring