“Time,” wrote the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, “is a river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away.” In Roma (Smokestack, £7.95), Bernard Saint follows the shade of Marcus Aurelius through the elastic time zones of the Eternal City.

There they encounter Gregory Corso, Jane Birkin, Serge Gainsbourg and Chet Baker. Like Cavafy’s Alexandria, Grass’s Danzig and Fellini’s Rome, this is a city of imagination and history, faces and frescoes; where past, present, and future meet:

“One who sets his sights on fame / And while obscure endures the dream / Of posthumous recognition – / The praise of all the world / Means nothing to the dead / The living who remember him / One by one resume oblivion / Memory and fame are this / A rock-pool between tides / While ceaselessly the river meets the sea.”