As several readers may know, my day job is looking after Chedworth Roman Villa in the Cotswolds. Chedworth sits comfortably within a region that supported some of the most prosperous rural estates in Britannia. Yet the world that sustained and shaped the villa extended far beyond the Coln valley.
BOOK REVIEWS
Stephen Coan’s The Buried Man can only be described as magisterial. It is the culmination of decades of patient, methodical, and deeply informed scholarship. Coan has lived with, traced, and tracked H. Rider Haggard for much of his adult life, and this monumental volume represents the distillation of that long engagement. It is unlikely to be surpassed for a very long time.
BLUE PLAQUES
The first Reform synagogue in South Africa, Temple Israel opened in 1936 under the leadership of Rabbi M.C. Weiler. An Art Deco temple designed by architects Kallenbach, Kennedy & Furner, the building also houses the archives of Progressive Judaism. Equality between man and women was promoted, and in 1949 the sisterhood at Temple Israel founded the M.C.