There is an old vaudeville routine, in which a comedian dons a succession of scary masks. As he puts each one on, he taps the shoulder of a man standing in front of him; when the man turns round, he is not in the least shocked, only irritated. Finally the comedian gives up, gets out a cigarette, and taps the man on the shoulder to ask him for a light. The man turns round, takes one look at the comedian’s real face and cries out in terror.

I had a comparable experience in the run-up to Apocalypse, a new show at the Royal Academy. It was billed as shocking and controversial, but as I read accounts of its star exhibits and saw pictures of them, I felt strangely unmoved. An effigy of the present Pope lying on the ground, felled by a meteorite? Uh-huh. A giant dog kneaded out of balloons by Jeff Koons? Not him again! A reconstruction of a bus shelter outside Auschwitz? The kind of thing, given some other recent exhibitions, that you’ve almo ...

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