Timothy Spearman writes

They tell us to think outside the box while standing on their soapbox. They encourage us to be original while creating fashionable schools of thought within which to inscribe and circumscribe our own. They urge us to swim against the current while sending us to the ‘best schools’ for cultivating a more advanced school of fish. They bid us to think independently and then banish, ostracize and blackball us for failing to conform to the social norm. They sing the praises of the hero while vilifying, persecuting and ostracizing him when he shows up. They castigate the serial killer and psychopath while venerating him as highly as the great inventors and scientists by honouring him with the three names normally accorded to the venerable and great. And so it is that John Wilkes Booth, John George Haigh, and Jack the Ripper keep good company with Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Alexander Graham Bell, and Martin Luther King at Madame Tussaud's.