The Ceausescus’ Budapest residence, with gold-plated bathroom.

Then and now pictures below (scroll down) of the Ceausescus’ palatial Bucharest residence, including the photo I took of their bed at Christmas 1989 literally still unmade from their last night in the building Dec 21-22.

Three days later, both were dead.

Recalling that first visit in the emotional heat of the immediate post-revolutionary days, I don’t remember it being quite so over-the-top in its bourgeois gilt. But yes, they really did have a gold-plated bathroom (although our guide was insistent that it was “only” 7-carat industrial gold leaf and not the real thing all the way through. Bit of a metaphor there).

Images below without captions, but beginning with the interior of the Ceausescu residence (now a museum), then what Ceausescu ridiculously called the Palace of the People, with grand marble staircase and cascades of chandeliers illustrating what seems to be a universal love among dictators of gold.

Final picture of self and Paul Voicu, in 1989 the bellboy at the Modern Hotel where I arrived early morning of Saturday December 23, opening (just in time for the end of the Today programme on Radio Four) a telephone line to the BBC in London which I then didn’t close for a full week.

Remembering how I wanted to close the window so the questions from London wouldn’t be drowned out by the noise of gunfire outside, and the producers at the other end yelling, “NO, leave the window OPEN!!!”

Think Saddam Hussein, the Pharaohs, Russian Tsars and perhaps also one current incumbent of the White House.