The French king Louis XVI was removed in 1792, but his brother became king in 1814 and returned in 1815, after briefly being removed for ~3 months. France was ruled by a king until February 1848

Cao Xueqin, The Story of the Stone, is brilliant, well worth rereading regularly

Good to see. I remember Julian Hoppit telling me years ago that Brewer underplayed the importance of customs

Taxes are very hard to target at particular companies or individuals in practice and, in any case, doing this explicitly contravenes basic principles of tax law. So virtually no country is going to respond to Trump's tariffs in this way. Reciprocal tariffs, yes; US oligarch tax, no