clipped from: www.economist.com   
SOMERSET STRUBEN DE CHAIR was an adventurous young British soldier stationed with the Royal Horse Guards in Palestine when he saw a larger-than-life marble bust (pictured below) displayed in the shop-window of an antique dealer named Ohan, opposite the King David Hotel in Jerusalem.
Bonhams
Courtesy of the De Chair family

It was 1941 and the second world war had been going for two years. On entering the shop de Chair was startled to find that the bust was actually a double-headed figure; on one side was the face of Bacchus (or Dionysus as he is more often called) and on the other a garlanded Ariadne.

“After many visits and many cups of black coffee,” he wrote in his diary, “I entered into a contract with Ohan, under which I paid a ten per cent deposit and gave my executors 18 months to pay the balance and collect it if I did not return from the battlefield.”