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
On 8 December 1900, Major-General Ralph Clements camped below the Nooitgedacht cliffs with a force of 1500 British soldiers and ten artillery pieces. Before dawn on 13 December, 2500 Boers under Generals De la Rey, Smuts and Beyers attacked, Beyers from the top of the Magaliesberg and De la Rey from the base. 300 British soldiers defending the summit were quickly overwhelmed.