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
Designed in 1918 for Mr and Mrs. T.J. Welch by Cook and Ralston, architects of the original Pretoria Town Hall, this gracious home was acquired in 1924 by Bridget and Edwin Orlando Leake. A staunch Wesleyan and a Rand pioneer Mr Leake served as a councillor on the Johannesburg Council for twenty-seven years without remuneration, and as mayor from 1925-1926.