Nonetheless, there is something curiously English in the monomania of the festival's prime movers.

ECONOMIST: Putting on anything and everything by Verdi

Some question whether his appetite for politics, which in his youth bordered on monomania, ever returned after he led the Tories to a landslide loss in 2001.

ECONOMIST: The government��s foreign missteps are multiplying

His arrogance, meanwhile, verges on monomania.

ECONOMIST: The Republican nomination