From flick to fantasy

Dr John C Taylor, who got rich by inventing the thermostatic device that turns off kettles when the water inside them boils, is selling his £30m Isle of Man mansion. In what might be a first among estate agents’ superlatives, it’s billed as “the most complicated house ever built”, on account of its specially wired chandeliers, the elliptical form of its exterior and of several rooms and “a threedimensional atrium floor precision-engineered into the shape of a dahlia”. It’s striking that someone who gave the world something as simple and practical as the kettle switch should have since built something so extravagantly elaborate. I don’t know whether to be bemused or impressed.