Book & site list

[Marko]

[Boreades]

[Mick Harper]

I have a rule of thumb nowadays for science programmes. If it's some dude travelling round the globe I don't bother. If it's a voice-over I give it at least a preliminary viewing. The point of course is that it costs so much to film some git and his entourage traipsing around that the material is certain not only to be utterly orthodox but 'accessible' ie dumbed-down for a mass (even by BBC-4 standards) audience.

A voice-over programme is not only cheap but it may actually be bought-in which occasionally means some foreign light shafts the British telly gloom.

[hvered]

Travelling around Britain is or can be most fulfilling. I've thoroughly enjoyed The Green Road Into The Trees by Hugh Thomson, who's managed to write the only (modern) walking book that's readable to the very end.

Once the end is reached it's also worth reading the list of people/institutions potentially offended in the preceding pages.

[Boreades]

[hvered]

[Boreades]

[hvered]

Maybe I didn't express myself properly, my fault. Sheldrake is comfortable with revisionist ideas about history and language since they don't impinge on his field. I've never been an -ist but perhaps a revisionist quantum physicist has more in common with a biologist than another physicist.

[spiral]

Show me a man who has more than three books in his library and I will show you a man who has stopped thinking for himself.

That only leaves one choice left after ME and THOBR.

My recommendation would be the wonderful "Land of Lettuce Sweetapple" by Fowler and Blackstock.

This is essentially a labour of love from two local archaeologists, who have thoroughly investigated the landscape around the parishes of West Overton and Fyfield, close to Averbury.

It's full of colour slides, maps, aerial photographs, old folklore etc anything that either explains how the landscape is or was.

The first part is an investigation from prehistory onwards up to the time of Lettuce Sweetapple in the 1800s. Their research lasted 40 years, so you see "orthodox theories" come and go as fashions change, all the time they learn more and more.

Finally they let their imagination run riot over what has happened since prehistory. This section is totally bonkers. Full credit to the authors for finally rejecting orthodoxy and putting their names to such lunacy, but it really was a bit of a waste after all the hard spadework.

It covers lots of topics on this site.

If you want to know more about the area round Averbury it is a truly brilliant reference work.

Spiral gives it a 5******.

[Boreades]