As befits the man who, when he was director, undertook the £6m refurbishment and restoration of Sir John Soane’s Museum in London, Tim Knox, now the director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, has had the museum’s 1848 portico and railings restored.

The museum was designed by George Basevi (1794-1845), a pupil of Sir John Soane, and one of the leading neo-classical architectures of his generation.