Then came victory in the Hejaz, and finally, the Ottoman Empire fell. Emir Faisal came to Paris for the Peace Conference, and what had been speculation, mere banter in high rooms off a boulevard, now these questions of nation or not were on the very threshold, and the blissful years of exile and indeterminacy were coming to an end.

Subjected to many programmes of piecemeal excavation over the last two centuries – a sort of death by a thousand cuts – Castor has nevertheless produced evidence of a huge complex, far grander than a mere villa. Its status as a possible administrative centre for imperial estates in the Fens, perhaps as a successor to the imposing establishment at S

Octavian – or Augustus, as he was officially known after 27 BCE (a made-up title meaning something close to ‘Revered One’) – dominated Roman political life for more than fifty years, until his death in 14 CE. Going far beyond the precedents set by Pompey and by Caesar, he was the first Roman emperor to last the course and the longest-serving ruler