In the second half of the 19th century, large numbers of pieces, including many imperial works, were brought to Europe and America.
But for an understanding of how the imperial court worked -- its pomp, ceremony and emphasis on rank -- imperial robes are invaluable guides, Ms. Coleman said.
There were potteries in the New Forest and an imperial weaving works at Winchester, but the most substantial remains are in the town walls of Silchester and the outer wall at Portchester Castle.
And while Mr. Said revealed just how powerful fantasies about other cultures can be, he was also exerting his own variety of imperial power over his subject matter, limiting its geographical and scholarly range to suit his own vision of how the imperial West worked.
He has, for example, denied that tens of thousands of "comfort women", mainly from the Korean peninsula, were coerced by the Japanese imperial army into working as sex slaves in frontline military brothels.
Sergio Bertazzo, a materials scientist at Imperial, had been working on the build up of calcium in human blood vessels when he met Maidment and asked if he could study some fossils with an array of electron microscope techniques.
Previously she was Deputy Director at Agriculture for Impact, Imperial College London, working with European governments to increase their support for agricultural development, and food and nutrition security in sub-Saharan Africa.
Such folk will be more pleased, though, by his pessimism about whether modern America has the will to make imperial interventions work, given the clash between its inward-looking democratic process and the high cost, in both money and casualties, of lengthy interventions overseas.
For those still working in imperial measurements (that's you America), this is about 120 cubic miles.
In another corner of the labyrinthine Imperial campus, researchers are working on a very different piece of the puzzle.
