http://www.mychumsclub.comVintageVintage

 We think we know the Romans. Countless books, films, plays and pieces of music have been inspired by an empire that, at its height, in AD117, stretched from the site of modern Glasgow in the north to the Sahara desert in the south, and from the Atlantic to Basra . Hollywood sword-and-sandal epics from Quo Vadis to Gladiator, as well as the BBC’s Rome, give us the impression of an empire at once brutal and noble, heroic and corrupt, bloody and decadent - an empire of slavery but also of many freedoms, of multiple identities, all drawn together in the service of Rome and its emperors. But how much do we know? It can be hard to glimpse the real empire through the histories that have survived the centuries, histories that are invariably biased depending on who wrote them, when and, above all, for whom.

 Maritime Greenwich is a World Heritage Site. It incorporates a remarkable assemblage of buildings and objects which have great significance to British history.

By the 15^th century a small palace had been built by the River Thames. A century later King Henry VIII enlarged it, and established his armoury. Of this, nothing remains above ground, but at the edge of the royal hunting grounds King James I started to construct the first building in England in a pure Renaissance style. The charming Queen’s House was completed for Henrietta Maria, and it will be visited on our tour - it currently contains a very rich collection of paintings belonging to the National Maritime Museum

A strange event took place on 15 November 1996 when a three hundredweight lump of sandstone, under escort from a detachment of Coldstream Guards, was piped across a Borders stream by a band of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers. The Stone of Scone had, at least for many Scots, been happily repatriated. (Never mind that legend tells that the stone originated in Egypt and was brought to Scotland in the baggage of ‘Princess Scota’, daughter of Ramses II. The Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities is currently not, as far as is known, demanding to have it back.)