6-9 Carlton House Terrace: Hitler's Nazi embassy in central London

It sounds like a scenario in a Robert Harris novel, but it isn't — Hitler's Nazi party really did have a foothold in London, in this building near the Foreign Office. It was used by the Nazis as their embassy from 1936 to the outbreak of war in 1939. In 1936 it was revamped by Hitler's representative, the ambassador Joachim von Ribbentrop, who modernised it with characteristic Teutonic efficiency. After the makeover, No 7 was used as a base to house German military attachés. Hitler's architect, Albert Speer, was then sent from Berlin with a brief from the Führer to design a grandiose embassy that would convey some of the portentous glamour of the Third Reich. Speer was also responsible for a staircase, made from Italian marble, donated by Mussolini.

However, after years of shillyshallying and trying to get on with Herr Hitler, the British Establishment finally realised it was inappropriate for him to continue with such an extensive pied-â-terre in the capital, and the Germans were kicked out.

The building was taken over by the Foreign Office in 1939 and stripped of most of its Nazi fixtures before it was rented to the Royal Society in 1967. There are few signs that this was once a Nazi residence, apart from a border design of swastikas on the floor of one public room. Another, more poignant reminder is a memorial to a dog, Giro, whose owner, Dr Leopold von Hoesch, was the German ambassador from 1932 to 1936. Giro died in 1934 when he made a fatal connection with an exposed electricity wire. He was given a full Nazi burial and his grave lies in what was once the front garden to No 9, now a small space between the Duke of York steps and a garage ramp. His tombstone features the German epitaph "Giro: Ein treuer Begleiter" ("Giro: A true companion"). This is London's sole Nazi memorial, situated somewhat inappropriately in an area filled with monuments to heroes of the British empire.

FROM THE BOFFINS

Right on the nose

Three neuroscientists from America set 23 volunteers a series of tests, which involved plugging either their right or left nostril with tissues. With the right nostril blocked, the subjects did better at visual tasks (which use the right half of the brain). With the left one blocked, they did better at verbal reasoning, a left-brain task. This proves that you can control how your brain works by choosing which nostril you breathe through.

BORN ON THE SAME DAY

Butch Satirist and the Sundance Kid

Robert Redford fans might balk at the claim that the late Willie Rushton was his spiritual doppelganger. But the Hollywood golden boy and the hirsute British wit were both born on August 18, 1937. Both trod the boards early in their careers — Redford in plays such as Barefoot in the Park, and Rushton in Spike Milligan's The Bed-Sitting Room. Rushton, a co-founder of the satirical magazine Private Eye, was the perpetual doodler who became a celebrated cartoonist — while Redford worked as a pavement artist in Paris at the age of 19, and would later enjoy sketching to relieve boredom on movie sets.

Redford played the lead in the 1972 movie The Candidate, and Rushton stood as a joke candidate against Sir Alec Douglas-Home in a 1963 by-election. Redford directed the 1994 film Quiz Show, by which time Rushton was a much-loved stalwart of genuine British TV quiz shows, from Celebrity Squares to Through the Keyhole. And the two charmers have both relished the odd practical joke. Legend has it that Redford had a commode delivered to Paul Newman's home. More wittily, Rushton, who died in 1996, once surreptitiously labelled a plug socket at the Victoria and Albert Museum "Plug hole designed by Hans Plug (b.1908)".