Lea Ypi, Free. A child and a country at the end of history
This is a marvelous almost magical book about growing up in Albania. It encompasses just over a decade under communism, then her teenage...
Netflix’s The Dig
The very thought of this new film thrilled me, and I wasn’t disappointed. The story of the discovery and excavation in 1939 of the...
A Prehistorian at large in Robert Harris’s new thriller
Robert Harris’ characteristically gripping thriller about the race to locate the launch sites of the deadly German V2 ballistic bombs...
IL GENTILUOMO INGLESI
Twenty years after my biography of the extraordinary archaeologist, Thomas Ashby, was published by the British School at Rome. Now it has...
Jonathan Coe’s Middle England, 2019
In a week in which the UK’s new Boris Johnson (Conservative) government has faced unprecedented and well-deserved trials at the hands of...
Alan Bennett and Brexit
Every year the Yorkshire treasure – the writer and playwright – Alan Bennett reads his previous year’s diary for The London Review of...
Voices from the Deep
Sean Kingsley’s new book is a gem of an archaeological story. The Battle of the Atlantic was in its second year when the British India...
John Blair’s 'Building Anglo-Saxon England'
In the summer of 1969, excavating on the Bell Hotel site in Gloucester, we discovered – deep down – the remains of the Flavian Roman...
Yanis Varoufakis and Homer
As a baby-boomer who has enjoyed the extraordinary benefits of the post-war European project, it is hard not to be deeply affected by...
Archaeologists at war
I picked up Ben Pastor’s The Road to Ithaca (Bitter Lemon Press, 2015) idly thinking it was about Ithaca (because I have a fondness for...
