The glove in his left hand is doing a job. Wilhelm was dragged out at birth by forceps that tore the nerves of his arm and neck — a brachial plexus injury, Erb's palsy — and the arm never grew. It ended about six inches shorter than his right and locked stiff at the elbow. He spent the rest of his life being photographed around it. Capes, swords, books, a gun; his tailors set the left pocket higher; in formal portraits he rested the left hand on his sword hilt and laid the right on top of it. And very often he simply held a pair of gloves in the left hand, because gloves make an arm look longer.

Tradition has him in field grey with the goggles pushed up on the Pickelhaube — a man who arrived by car — the orders across his chest and the sword at his side. And the glove in the left hand, which the sculptor may or may not have known he was copying. It is in almost every photograph ever taken of him. In a diorama he stands with his generals in Part I and Part II. He was not at the Armistice: he had abdicated two days before and gone to the Netherlands.

Tradition of London model 821. 54mm, white metal, hand-painted in gloss enamel. Single standing figure of Kaiser Wilhelm II. Supplied in the Tradition Classic Red Box. Allow 2–3 weeks delivery.