What would Trump do with Stonehenge?

This is not a polemic, but a long reflection on Stonehenge, archaeology, conservation and the modern world. So as not to interrupt the read, I have put no links in the text. There are some at the end. In 2014 the president of the United States visited Britain’s most famous ancient monument. Barack Obama was …

Another old Avebury excavation

The wonderful HEIR Project in Oxford has prompted me to follow up my previous post about Avebury. I showed two images there, said to be dated 1895 (a photo) and November 15–18, 1895 (a painting). HEIR helpfully pointed out in a tweet that Underhill dated the painting August 23 1895, which makes more sense than …

A surprising and charming Avebury discovery

Long ago when I was curator of the museum in Avebury, I came across a pencil sketch in the museum in Devizes that showed a section through the great henge bank around Avebury’s stone circle. It’s an extraordinary document of an excavation in 1894, that was never published at the time. Something quite unexpected has …

Wilmington Man in Morley College

There’s a fascinating little film on Liss Llewellyn’s website, about the lost Morley College murals, The Pleasures of Life, created by three prominent inter-war artists in the late 1920s. Charles Mahoney worked in the Concert Hall, and Edward Bawden and Eric Ravilious in the student Refreshment Room. Their theme was theatrical fantasy, suggested by William …