Primary sauces

Lisa Hilton savours a timeless French bistro in Pimlico that displays no timidity with the ladle

is a relative thing. Lamenting the sack of Rome by the Goths in 410, St Jerome wailed, “The whole world has died with one city”. Perhaps it looked that way from the cave in Palestine, but the scholar’s dramatic grief contrasts with other contemporary evidence that despite a decline in material living standards evinced by the quality of pottery and roof tiles, the Germanic rulers continued to repair public buildings, use Latin and generally appreciate a “sub” if not wholly “Roman” lifestyle.