Chedworth is one of the few Roman villas in Britain whose remains are open to the public, and this book seeks to explain what these remains mean. The fourth century in Britain was a 'golden age' and at the time the Cotswolds were the richest area of Roman Britain. The wealthy owners of a villa such as Chedworth felt themselves part of an imperial Roman aristocracy. This is expressed at the villa in the layout of the buildings, rooms for receiving guests and for grand dining, the provision of baths, and the use of mosaics. The villa would also have housed the wife, family and household of the owner and been the centre of an agricultural estate. In the nineteenth century Chedworth was rediscovered, and part of the villa's tale is the way in which it was viewed by a nineteenth-century Cotswold landowner, Lord Eldon, and then its current owners, the National Trust. Now, in this remarkable and beautifully illustrated volume, Chedworth's story is told in full.

In a post-truth age where anything is believable and the best way to survive is to contradict everything and believe in nothing, the everyday person can fail to find their place in it all, as every living moment is documented, polished up and presented for consumption by the all-seeing gaze of our so-called "friends" where it is judged and rated, then left to fall away down the wall, existing only on a server in Colorado, and a few failing neurons sparking in the darkness. Throw a light on that darkness! Look at everything in your lives! Examine the everyday! In this collection, Simon Cleary, a pretentious writer who failed at being "deep" turns his hand to documenting the strangeness of being a human in this society, trying to get jobs, attend social events and get along with fellow man...sometimes with, to use the parlance of today, "sub-optimal results..."