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
For over 20 years, from 1977-2000, this was the home of anti-apartheid clergyman Beyers Naudé and wife Ilsa. While in Greenside, he suffered banning, house arrest and harassment from the apartheid state. From here the ageing “Oom Bey” moved to Northcliff, becoming a congregant at the Aasvoëlkop N G Kerk, where he had condemned apartheid from the pulpit in 1963.