The eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79 buried the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum beneath a layer of ash and pumice several metres deep. The disaster was so swift and so complete that, although most of the inhabitants escaped, the materials of their daily lives were preserved intact giving us a near-perfect representation of what life was like in a Roman provincial town of the first century, from the graffiti on the walls to the fruit on the market stalls.

The classical historian and pre-eminent communicator Michael Grant shows us these two cities, their arts, trades, public and private life, their squares and temples, pubs and brothels after nineteen hundred years frozen in death.