‘Thou, silent form, doth tease us out of thought’

One February day in 1845 a well-dressed young man walked into Gallery Nine of the British Museum and hurled a lump of sculpture at a glass case. He smashed the case and shattered its contents — the Portland Vase, a famous piece of Roman glass. The vase was broken into 200 pieces. The vandal turned out to be a mentally unstable Irish student, and for this mindless crime he was committed to two months’ hard labour.

The Portland Vase was glued together again, and returned to its glass case. It still stands in the Museum today — a small, dumpy, blue-glass vase carved with white cameo figures. It isn’t particularly beautiful, but for centuries it has been a Grade-A classical treasure, bought by the ultra-rich and coveted by scholars who have tried to explain it. Many of the vase’s owners have been richly entertaining, and their stories form the subject of this book.