But the masques - which Leapman describes in sometimes tedious detail - had a downside. They were seen as evidence of the profligacy of the court. This at a time when James, and later Charles, were almost permanently at odds with Parliament, and fatally inclined to dismiss it altogether. Jones spent a miserable year as an MP (Member of Parliament) but it was no good: he was the King's man, and that meant that he had a sad last few years. After his master Charles I was beheaded - outside the Banqueting House, if you please, only 100 yards from Inigo's house - Jones himself was arrested by the Parliamentarians, fined heavily, forced to dissociate himself from the monarchy, and scornfully released. He lived another seven years to the age of 79, but his influence had gone. Under Wren and Hawksmoor, English architecture turned to the Baroque. Later his more restrained approach was to be rediscovered and recognized by the Young Turks of the Palladian movement in the 18th century, and his place in history was secure.

Leapman describes a vain, pompous man - Jonson caricatured him as "Vangoose", as "Dominus-Do-All", as a hypocritical knave (they fell out, comprehensively and publicly, when Jones started doing the writing as well as the designing of the masques). But earlier, Jonson had freely acknowledged his prodigious design skills. When Jones was away on his second protracted visit to Italy and other designers were brought in to create the masques, they were woefully bad.