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
This is the site of the house built for Rowland Albermarle Arthur Bettington, a stockbroker, who raised “Bettington’s Horse” in 1895 and rode out to support Dr Jameson’s abortive invasion of the Transvaal. In 1899 Bettington with his four sons volunteered. He joined Thorneycroft’s Mounted Infantry with the rank of captain and fought in the Natal campaign until he was wounded at Spionkop.