The BBC’s man in Washington DC ponders what The Great Gatsby tells us about modern America. Apparently, there is another movie version of this F Scott Fitzgerald novel coming up. It’s going to star Leonardo DiCaprio and someone called Carey Mulligan (who sounds like a golf shot).

Gatsby’s mansion is the venue for riotous, all-night parties, filled with hedonists getting drunk on the host’s money. Yet by the end of the story, the home is – like many foreclosed properties across the US today – empty and neglected.