'I find that level of change fascinating'

ULIAN Fellowes is talking about 19th-century America’s infamous “robber barons” and why he believes we are seeing history repeat itself: “There are many similarities between them and some people we see now.”

- By Gabrielle Donnelly

He is referring to the wealthy industrialists who once controlled America, a selection of whose fictional equivalents swagger through the streets of 1880s New York in his TV drama The Gilded Age.

“When we were making season two of the show, Elon Musk and whoever were racing each other to the Moon. They didn’t have rockets in the Gilded Age, but if they had, that’s what they’d have been doing.”

It’s no giant leap of the imagination to picture Musk and fellow billionaire space racer Jeff Bezos inhabiting the world of The Gilded Age’s fictional self-made millionaire, George Russell (Morgan Spector).

This week Bezos, 61 - founder of Amazon and the world’s third richest person — will take over a swathe of Venice for a multi-million-pound wedding to fiancée Lauren Sanchez that could shut parts of the city.