I took a walk through old Wapping, in East London with my nine-year-old son the other week. It was low water so instead of stumbling over cobbles we walked along the exposed river bank.

Regaling him with Dickensian-like tales of Execution Dock, piracy and press gangs his imagination took on a Gothic mood.

As we breasted the Isle of Dogs he said: ‘I reckon there must have been a shipwreck here, daddy, and it must have been loaded with shopping trollies.’