"The next incumbent could, if they chose to, put a big marzipan layer of management between them and the work.

The fruit cake, with a marzipan layer, is thought to date back to Tudor times.

Marzipan layer thin.

If the proportion of women with different attitudes to work varies among countries, might it not change over time as more women get into the marzipan layer and beyond?

In her thirties or forties, she has an established career under her belt, perhaps in the "marzipan layer" - one position below the still male-dominated senior executive level.

Burt likens the ideal mixture to a Christmas cake – mortgages and retail deposits are the cake, the marzipan layer is BOS’s corporate lending division and taking selective private-equity stakes in companies is the icing on top.

All this migration and self-conscious adjustment has left basic Sloanes – the ones who didn’t escape through the City’s magic trapdoor into serious money – as just another sub-set of the great expanded fluid middle class rather than a hierarchical marzipan layer beneath the real toffs.