In a world where the 26 richest people own as much as the poorest 50 per cent, you might have expected to see massive protests outside the Kongresszentrum in Davos this week. Over the past ten years, however, the once thriving mobilisation against the World Economic Forum has lost steam. ‘We’ve witnessed a slump,’ Mélinda Tschanz told me. She belongs to the Swiss chapter of ATTAC, an ‘alter-globalisation’ organisation founded in 1998. ‘“What happened?” is a question we’ve been asking ourselves a lot lately.’

On his doctor's advice, Robert Louis Stevenson spent two winters in Davos. He finished Treasure Island there, but didn't like the place:

'Shut in a kind of damned Hotel,/Discountenanced by God and man; /The food? – Sir, you would do as well/ To fill your belly full of bran./The company? Alas the day/That I should toil with such a crew,/With devil anything to say,/Nor anyone to say it to.' 'So,' according to E.S. Turner, 'RLS took to tobogganing, alone and at night, which he found strangely exalting.'