The email signature, to paraphrase Polonius, oft proclaims the man. Professor Nadey Hakim’s shows a ludicrous capacity for achievement. A tenth of the way down his signature you’ve discovered that he’s Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur and Vice-President of the British Red Cross. Other titles include Imperial College President’s Envoy and Vice-President of the International Medical Sciences Academy.

One in particular catches my eye: Vice President of Conservative Health. It reminds me of where I first met him: at a Carlton Club dinner. There, I was introduced to a neat Lebanese man by a Conservative Party treasurer: “And here’s who you want to be near if you happen to have a heart attack tonight.”

The 61-year-old is one of the world’s leading surgeons – part of the team that performed the world’s first hand transplant in 1998. We meet at 100 Harley Street, where Hakim has his private practice. But it’s not this that most interests me about him: it’s what he’s done with the time freed up by his surgical gifts. “I would finish my day’s operations early,” he tells me, “and people would say: ‘How can you have done those so quickly?’ And I’d say: ‘Check if anything is wrong with them’.”

Vindicated like this, he soon found the world’s hospitals accepting his more limited working hours. With the spare time, he began to sculpt. His subjects were the powerful: Emmanuel Macron, …