We spent the afternoon in the Banqueting House, Inigo Jones’s undemonstrative masterpiece in which he brought a version of a palazzo in Vicenza into the heart of Whitehall. Begun in 1619, it cost £15,618, replacing a previous banqueting pavilion. I hadn’t realised that in 1638, not long before the Civil War, Inigo Jones drew up grandiose plans for the reconstruction of Whitehall Palace as a whole, all in the style of the Banqueting House: the palace that Charles I dreamed of, but had his head cut off instead:-