OK, so... cursed, as I am, with the soul of a romantic, trapped in the perceptions of a scientist and blessed with the brains of an idiot. I spent most of last night re-rendering the image (which I now hope never to see again in my life) with no ambient light, but with some point lights strategically placed to replicate the real passage of light within the scene (ignoring the bevelled edge mirror, I'm not getting into prismatics!). Result shown above. On the plus side: many details in the full res tiff are stuningly photorealistic, this reduced res jpeg really doesn't do them justice. On the minus side: render time up from 43 mins to 2 hrs 58 mins, didn't notice till 3 am that the bump maps on the chair cusions and floor were ludicrously over the top with this lighting... meeting at 9 am with telephone hardware people.. TAPI device drivers... calling party IDZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz, zzzzzzzzz....