He designs for Louis Vuitton, Ferrari, Apple, Riva, Jaeger Le-Coultre and Montblanc, to name but a handful of his top-shelf clients. There’s virtually no box outside which the celebrity industrial designer cannot think.

But when it came to acquiring a plot of paradise on the north-western flank of the island of Ithaca, even Marc Newson had to play by the rules. Punishing, opaque, centuries-old Greek property ownership rules, that is. Rules that could reduce Odysseus to tears.