Late in life, a hypochondriac old bachelor, he took to listing remedies for his various bodily ailments alongside his architectural notes. Some say he was part of a homosexual circle: more likely, suggests Leapman, he was just not very interested in sex of any kind. Because if he was, naughty embittered Jonson would have told us. And anyway, Jones wrote in his medical notes: "Copulation must be utterly eschewed, for that thereby the best blood of man is wasted and natural strength enfeebled." In the end, though, we get a clearer impression of his coarse, irascible master James I and the aloof Charles than we do of their architect. Of course we do - Inigo was the loyal low-born servant, no powerful aristocrat.

It was Jones' fate to live in interesting times when there was not much money about for great public buildings (a civil war did not help), and when his talents were diverted into the manufacture of royal variety performances. What if he had built the great Whitehall Palace he conceived in 1638, of which the Banqueting House was just the beginning? Some say it was misconceived, that he would not have been up to the job. But in the end only one thing matters. However good or bad Inigo Jones really was as an architect and designer, he changed everything. He really was our first Renaissance man.

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