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
Lionel (Rusty) and Hilda Bernstein were members of the South African Communist Party who played a decisive part in the liberation struggle. Detentions, bannings and house arrest restricted all communication, employment and movement. They had a leading role in the Congress of the People in 1955. Rusty’s words became the Charter’s rallying call “ South Africa belongs to all who live in it, Black and White”