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
Originally old Pretoria Road, the name was changed in 1917 to honour Jan Christian Smuts (1870-1950). Graduate of Cambridge University, attorney-general of the Z.A.R, Smuts became a successful Boer general. He was involved in all stages of the war from the early negotiations which failed to the Peace Treaty of Vereeniging. He was later the prime minister of the Union of South Africa.