poliphilo

Rory McGrath's Pub Dig is Time Team with added blokeishness (as if the original wasn't blokeish enough). Actually I rather like it. The premise may be jokey but the archaeology isn't. In last night's show Rory and his team found a Roman hotel (mansio) under the car park of the Six Bells at St. Albans- a discovery of national importance.

The Romans Mary Beard wants us to meet aren't the emperors and generals and blue-bloods, but people like the nouveau riche Eurysaces whose enormous tomb is built to look like a bread oven and whose epitaph she translates, loosely, as "Here lies Eurysaces the baker- geddit!" It is, she says, as if a modern footballer chose to be buried under a huge marble replica of a football boot. Great fun. If a woman can be blokeish, Mary is- but she's also erudite and original.