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
Near this point on Government Square, in front of the Court House, on 31 May 1900 Field Marshall Roberts rode into Johannesburg and accepted surrender of Johannesburg from the Z.A.R. Commandant, Dr. F.E.T. Krause. The Boers had been allowed 24 hours to evacuate the town provided they left the mines intact.