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 March 10, 1922 the white miner’s strike turned into an armed revolt against the Smuts government. During the subsequent Rand Revolt, the rebels briefly established control in Jeppe, among other districts. On March 11 over 600 mostly unarmed men of the Jeppe and Denver Workers commandoes led by Captain Hall MC launched a surprise attack on the army depot at Ellis Park.