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
Mbuyisa Makhubu became the most recognised face of the mass shooting of students by police on June 16 1976. The agonised figure of Mbuyisa, aged 18, appeared carrying the murdered Hector Pieterson in the iconic photograph taken by Sam Nzima. After the photograph was published around the world, Mbuyisa was forced to flee South Africa.