David was director for 29 years, during which time the education department was expanded, a new wing for conservation, storage and visitor events was built and a new roof was put over the mosaics.

He has also been a good friend to the Record Office, and indeed to Fishbourne itself, where he was involved in the millennium celebrations, and he wrote most of the chapter on the Romans in The Fishbourne Book.

In May, the palace will be celebrating 40 years of being open to the public.

The beginning of the modern story of the Roman Palace is usually cited as 1960, and the story of workmen digging a trench for some water pipes and coming across a mosaic is now world-famous.

However, its origins go further back – pieces of pottery and tile have been found in that area of the village for centuries, and an early name for the place, Fittenhall Field – Field of the Fallen Hall – may reflect what lay under the surface.

Fishbourne villagers were involved in the excitement of the 1960 find, and the archaeological excavations.

What was it like to be on a dig which gradually became world-famous? Here Mary Hand gives her account:

"The Roman Palace site was excavated largely by volunteer amateurs who, over the years, came in their hundreds from all over the UK as well as from France, Germany, Yugoslavia and the United States.

"In some years, at any one time, the team was as large as 70.

"In the 1960s the British Council for Archaeology sent out details of excavations requiring labour.

"Mostly volunteers paid their own expenses but for Fishbourne there was the added inducement in some seasons of a £1-a-day subsistence allowance and basic accommodation – camp beds and sleeping bags in the disused cinema in Eastgate Square.

"Fishbourne was especially popular not just for the grandeur of the palace but also from 1962 because of the presence of the Festival Theatre.

"The work was six days a week, starting at 9am and finishing at 6pm with set lunch and tea breaks.

"Tools had to be cleaned each evening and carefully stacked away, and discipline with regard to the trenches, and who went where and did what, was very firm.

"The work was varied. Some volunteers used trowels and toothbrushes to clean up delicate artefacts.

"Others, particularly in the early days, used pickaxes and shovels to dig down to just above the remains. Then it was important to take off layer by layer, mapping and labelling anything significant before it was put in labelled collection trays and sent off to be cleaned and catalogued.