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 was a home of Selope Thema (1886 – 1955), after he moved from Limpopo Province to Johannesburg, where he became politically active. He is remembered as a founding figure and prominent leader of the early ANC, and from the early 1920s through to 1940s, he led struggles against racial discrimination. A persuasive writer and journalist, he served as an editor of the Bantu World from 1932 – 1952.