(David Hemmings was the writer-director’s choice for the lead role.) There is a selection of Kubrick’s 276 books about the French emperor, including Felix Markham’s biography, which is illuminated with asterisks, underlinings and notes: “Who assassinated Tsar Paul? How did the politics really work?” Most intriguing of all is a wooden cabinet of index cards which Groen’s co-curator, Deyan Sudjic, calls “an analogue Wikipedia”. This material consists of photographs, sketches, and documents, among them a gracious letter from Audrey Hepburn, turning down the role of Napoleon’s wife Joséphine de Beauharnais.

Midsommar and the blinding terror of ‘daylight horror' Why When Harry met Sally is the greatest romcom of all time Is Tyler Durden’s film’s most misunderstood man? “You can see his methods, and the amount of material he gathered before he even started.” “We put the display upfront because it’s a beautiful illustration of his process,” says Adrienne Groen, the co-curator of the Design Museum’s exhibition.

Besides, the story of how Napoleon was nearly-but-not-quite made exemplifies Kubrick’s sky-high ambition, his ravenous intellectual curiosity and his obsessive planning. Critics regularly hail it as the greatest and most tantalising unfinished film of all. As odd as that might seem, Kubrick fans are almost as fixated on Napoleon – to use its working title – as they are on anything else in his awe-inspiring canon. But its opening section is devoted to a film he didn’t make: a biopic of Napoleon Bonaparte. The Stanley Kubrick exhibition at London’s Design Museum examines the making of every one of the extraordinary director’s films.

Napoleon by felix markham