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
Built for Richard Feetham in 1906 and designed by Baker, Masey and Sloper, this was the first house to be erected on this street. Feetham was brought to Johannesburg in 1902 as deputy town clerk - one of a group of Oxford graduates (Milner's Kindergarten) who were to assist in the reconstruction of the Transvaal after the Anglo-Boer War. This house became their meeting place.