The Titanic was insured at Lloyd’s. When Black residents of Montgomery, Alabama, boycotted segregated buses in the 1950s, Lloyd’s was the only place they could find to insure their substitute carpool system. After 9/11, Lloyd’s members paid out billions of dollars to airlines, businesses in crisis, and the relatives of those killed in the attacks. If you were to compile a list of the worst catastrophes of the last century, virtually all of them would, at some point, have ended up as claims at Lloyd’s, to be assessed and valued by Englishmen in bespoke suits who represent billions upon billions
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