An exhibition about the Emperor Claudius with a sub-title dedicated to his women is currently on at the Ara Pacis, Rome. I tend not to go to these block-busters, imagining the rooms to be heaving with visitors. Claudius, however, lacks pulling power and so for most of my visit I was alone, drifting through an installation of shimmering marble busts, red walls and projections of slow-moving phantom Roman courtiers. The Emperor Claudius in a red setting The tone of the exhibiti

Just off the busy Oxford to Swindon highway lies one of Europe’s great cathedrals. Great Coxwell barn is not of course a cathedral, but it certainly feels like it. This majestic building, dated by dendrochronology, was roofed with timbers felled in 1291-92 when the champion lands of the Vale of the White Horse were producing prodigious quantities of foodstuffs and wool. It is a metaphor of an economy at its zenith. Great Coxwell barn This Cistercian barn belonged to Coxwell G