For most people of certain age, the name of Gdańsk, Poland’s principle seaport on the Baltic, will forever bring to mind scratchy newsreel footage of world-historical importance: vast grey shipyards, cold hairy-looking men smoking furiously and wearing donkey jackets and, perhaps most vividly of all, legendary moustache-wearer Lech Wałęsa signing the Gdańsk Agreement of 1980 – which lead to the creation of the Solidarity trade union and to huge subsequent political changes both in Poland and more widely behind the Iron Curtain as a whole – with a giant comedy ballpoint pen.