This section of the Stones pages contains some recommendations of books (mainly) about the megalithic era. There are plenty of others, I don't claim to have read them all so this should be viewed as a personal section of favourites (plus a couple of stinkers to steer well clear of - on page 2). If you know of any books that are not listed I'd be really interested to hear your feedback and with your permission will quote you on this page.
To my way of thinking the pre-eminent scholar of stone circles and the megalithic era generally is Professor Aubrey Burl. I make no apologies for listing several of his books here. His greatest achievement is The Stone Circles of Britain, Ireland and Brittany (ISBN 0300083475 Yale University Press, London, 2000). The first edition was great but this second edition is wholly revised and substantially rewritten. It's an expensive but essential text for anyone with more than a passing interest in megaliths. Burl provides a geographically arranged guide to the major sites and looks at the archaeological evidence, speculates on how circles were built and what they were used for and much more besides. There is a summary gazetteer too. Richly illustrated with many photographs, maps and charts which complement the text well. Academically rigorous but written in a very accessible style, this is a constant source of reference but far too precious to take out into the field - you'll need his Guide (see below) for that. There are one or two clumsy editing errors which jar a little. And I find it hard to credit Burl's conviction that the Stonehenge bluestones (from the Preseli mountains in Wales) were deposited nearby through glacial rather than human means. But it's a masterpiece.
A Guide to the Stone Circles of Britain, Ireland and
Brittany (ISBN 0300063318 Yale University Press, London, 1995) is Aubrey
Burl's comprehensive gazetteer of major megalithic sites, and many minor
ones besides. Arranged geographically, this book gives good background
information and precise directions (occasionally a little off-target) to
many hundreds of sites. Some decent-enough illustrations and
well-suited to dipping into but primarily this is a book to take with you on
field visits (or to use to plan them) rather than a primary source of
contextual information. Burl uses a site rating system which gives an
indication of the condition and ambience of each site and, very importantly,
its accessibility. Complementary to the previous book but arguably in
need of updating so its worth double-checking some of the directions.
(For the less accessible sites you're best off checking larger-scale
Ordnance Survey maps in any case.)
Circles of Stone (ISBN 1860466613 Harvill Press, London, 1999) is a coffee table book with photography by Max Milligan and text by Aubrey Burl. The book is arranged into three main sections according to chronology and concentrates on 70 principal sites across Britain and Ireland. It is a beautiful book and many of the photographs are truly remarkable. Possibly my favourite is a misty shot of Castlerigg circle in Cumbria taken early one winter's morning - otherworldly. (Castlerigg is shown on the cover of Burl's Guide, illustrated above.) Some of the angles of these photographs entailed traipsing for miles through rugged terrain loaded not only with photographic equipment but a stepladder - true dedication. This is very much Milligan's book but Burl's text will enrich your appreciation of the images; you can see some of these on Max Milligan's website.
There are a number of very worthwhile books
about Avebury but Prehistoric Avebury by Aubrey Burl (ISBN 0300090870 Yale
University Press, London, 2002) is the best by a long way. This is the second
edition and it's a comprehensive and bang-up-to-date study
of England's greatest megalithic marvel. A particularly strong point of the
book is the great respect Burl pays to William Stukeley and John Aubrey,
among the earliest chroniclers of England's antiquities. Burl looks at
the monument itself, the context in which it was built and the cultural
context in which that took place as well as the history of the site since it was
first recorded. Scholarly but accessible and often wryly witty.
Some excellent illustrations too.
Avebury by Evelyn Francis (ISBN 1902418239 Wooden Books, Trowbridge, 2000) is a modest but entertaining whistle-stop tour of Avebury's history and folklore mainly distinguished by it's reproductions of William Stukeley's C18 drawings. Until I can afford to buy the recently published repro edition of Stukeley this will do! Strong traces of earth mysteries folderol such as stuff about the magical significance of the angle of Silbury Hill's slope but it does not outstay its welcome and I can think of many worse ways to spend the £3 or £4 it will cost you. This may be tricky to obtain though it's on sale at Avebury's Henge Shop as are many of the other books listed here. If you're looking for something more substantial you're better off sticking with Burl though.
A Zest For Life (ISBN 0953603903 Morven Books,
Swindon, 1999) is Lynda J Murray's biography of Alexander Keiller, the man
who did so much to reconstruct Avebury in the 1920s and 1930s. Keiller
was the heir to his family's marmalade fortune and something of a playboy
with a particular love of fast cars and skiing. Probably the last of
the gentleman antiquarians, he poured vast sums of money into restoring
buried and toppled stones at the site and the West Kennet Avenue, in
particular, is as much his lasting memorial as it is a testament to the
people who originally erected it all those thousands of years ago.
This isn't an especially well-written book but perfectly adequate for its
purpose and it's to Murray's credit that she does not attempt to disguise Keiller's less attractive traits while giving due recognition to his
enormous contribution. My copy is signed by the author.
Terence Meaden's The Secrets Of The Avebury Stones (ISBN 0285635018 Souvenir Press, London, 1999) is a real curate's egg: I'm not quite sure what to make of it even now. Quite a lot of the material is familiar ground but the central thesis is that the Avebury stones were chosen, at least in part, for their shapes and Rorschachian imagery. Anyone can photograph a megalith from a particular angle so that it looks like a head, or a vagina for that matter, and its impossible to judge whether the imagery that Meaden sees in the stones has any objective existence let alone whether it was evident to the people who erected the stones. I guess that it's entirely possible that in a preliterate world the stones were selected, and modified, as much for the messages they conveyed as for any other purpose. But the point is we will never know this and so Meaden's book should be viewed as a hypothesis and no more than that. Worth a read... then read Miles Russell's book for balance (see page 2).
The Avebury Cycle by Michael Dames (ISBN
0500278865 Thames and Hudson, London, 1996) veers rather too far towards the
hippy-dipshit end of the spectrum to be a true favourite of mine and I would
have to be honest and say that I have not managed to read the complete text.
Dames's central hypothesis is that the landscape around Avebury should be
viewed as a coherent statement of the beliefs of its builders and, what's
more, each element of the landscape was allocated a particular significance
according to the point in the yearly cycle. I feel that he takes an
interesting idea way beyond the point of credibility and that he strains too
hard to make the facts fit his hypothesis. But this has proved a very
influential book and perhaps I must give it another chance some time!
For a more objective account refer to Pollard and Reynolds (see page 2).
Janet and Colin Bord, who run the Fortean Picture Library, have written a trilogy of books on "earth mysteries", the first of which was Mysterious Britain (ISBN 0586081577 Paladin/Garnstone Press, London, 1974). This is a pretty thorough survey of ancient buildings, monuments and holy wells, among others, with some ley lines and UFOs thrown in for good luck. Arranged thematically, each section provides some background text and then a gazetteer section of notable sites. It's well written and engaging, reasonably sceptical about some of the more fanciful areas of enquiry and has some excellent black and white photographs. The UFO-type chapters are easily skipped! Given the age of the book some of the gazetteer details need to be cross-referenced and I suspect some of the sites may not have survived at all or not in the form described here.
The Bords second book of this kind was subtitled
More Mysterious Britain. It's quite a different sort of a book though.
The Secret Country (ISBN 0586082670 Paladin, London, 1978) is again arranged
thematically but there's no Gazetteer this time and a rather stronger
folkloric undercurrent. This enhances the text in many ways but there
is some stuff, about earth currents for example, which veers towards the
credulous at times. It's very 70s shall we say! The photographs, again, are outstanding.
Like the other two books, this is out of print and hard to get hold of.
Try contacting the authors directly via their
website and
they may still be able to sell you signed copies of all three, like mine!
Ancient Mysteries Of Britain (ISBN 0586085262 Paladin,London 1987) brings the series to a conclusion and restores the Gazetteer element which distinguished the first in the trilogy. 20 thematic chapters explore archaeoastronomy, hillforts, early Christian sites and "Dragonlore", to name just a few. The text is again a little marred by lashings of ley-hunting/earth energies stuff of the kind which makes Spirits Of the Stones for example (see below) such a hoot. Even so it would be a shame not to read the full set and the photographs are of the expected high standard. As before, the gazetteer needs to be cross-referenced with other sources, particularly if you are making a trip specifically to see one of these sites.
Julian Cope's
The Modern Antiquarian (ISBN 0722535996 Thorsons, London 1998) is the wondrous creation of the rock singer
turned megarak: a treasured possession, for all its flaws. This is
two books really, the first a series of essays of truly eccentric scope,
highly enjoyable if sometimes rather academically suspect. The bulk of
the book is a geographically arranged gazetteer of about 300 sites around
Britain. Each includes an essay, directions to the site,
contemporaneous (often very funny) jottings and a rich selection of
photographs; some handsome, others wilfully amateurish and all the more
charming for it. There are some quite howling errors here and there
and I would advise cross-referencing between this book and Burl's Guide
(and preferably an Ordnance Survey map) before planning any trips. A particular strength of the book is that
whereas Burl's Guide only deals with stone circles, Cope's includes many
other megalithic monuments, hill forts, barrows and just plain odd places.
A highly entertaining documentary film of the same name was shown on
the BBC a few years back and the
website, which includes many hundreds of
site reports from amateurs - even a few of my own - is very worth visiting. My copy
is signed in Mr Cope's fair hand.
The Megalithic
European (ISBN 0007138024 Element Books, London 2004) is Julian Cope's
second book on historic sites and an absolute cracker. Like it's
predecessor, the book is split into a shorter, discursive introduction and
the meat of the text, the gazetteer. What's immediately noticeable
about The Megalithic European is the greatly superior quality of print,
layout, photography and even the paper that it's printed on. The style
of writing, too, is a big improvement: tighter, more disciplined and dare I
say even scholarly. Cope's great enthusiasm shines through as strong
as ever but he tones down the New Age stuff and is somewhat more respectful
of orthodox archaeology. My only serious criticism is how the
gazetteer is organised. As with The Modern Antiquarian, sites are
listed alphabetically within their sections. But the sections too are
in alphabetic order. Thus some 300 pages separate Sardinia from
Corsica, despite these being two areas which might logically be visited at
the same time. A lot of flicking to and fro between sections would be
necessary to make serious use of this book as a travel companion. But
The Megalithic European is an astonishing piece of work: erudite, full of
insight, good humoured, and an object of intrinsic beauty. I
wouldn't've expected Cope to improve upon The Modern Antiquarian but bless
my cotton socks, he has.
Alfred Watkins is the man we have to thank for the theory of ley lines. His book The Old Straight Track (ISBN 0349137072 Abacus 1974) was first published in 1925 and proved to be highly controversial. Watkins lived in Herefordshire and worked mainly as a travelling representative for a brewery, he was an enthusiastic and skilled photographer and the inventor of the Watkins exposure meter. It was during his many travels that he had his brainwave: ancient sites, and modern structures built on or near their locations, seemed to be aligned across many miles of countryside... and so on. Whatever the faults of Watkins's line of argument (sorry!) this is a treasured book and at times highly persuasive. I had the pleasure of finding this copy in Ross-On-Wye and read it while holidaying in Herefordshire and visiting some of the sites. Watkins's photographs are marvellous and whatever you think of the theory of ley lines I urge you to go back to the primary source and to read this with an open mind. It's written in a very direct and often amusing style. A great pleasure. Needless to say, some of the sites described and pictured no longer exist.
Seahenge (ISBN 0007101910 HarperCollins, London,
2001) by Francis Pryor is, ostensibly, about the
remarkable wooden monument discovered in Norfolk in 1998. But in fact the book
is a semi autobiography and an indulgent one at that! But this makes
it all the more charming. Pryor writes with great erudition about his
area of specialism and has some very pertinent and though-provoking points
to make about the Neolithic generally. The autobiographical details
are interesting and witty and Pryor comes across, as he does on television,
as a very likeable man. Pryor has done a great deal to popularise
archaeology and it's always fun to see him arguing the toss with Phil
wotsisname on Time Team. The episodes he appears in are invariably the
best ones. I do wish he'd hit Tony Robinson though (my thespian
grapevine tells me that Mr R is a randy little lech with a monstrous ego and
Blackadder was always overrated anyway!)
Britain BC (ISBN 0007126921 HarperCollins, London, 2003) by Francis Pryor was published shortly after Pryor's two-part series of the same name for the BBC. The series was excellent and I found it very moving as well as enlightening, and beautifully photographed and edited. The text is more academically rigorous than Seahenge and there's very little of the personal stuff either but Pryor wears his knowledge lightly and has regard for the average reader. A strong theme of the TV series was the argument that Britain was a way more civilized and advanced nation, and society, than the Romans ever gave us credit for. In the closing chapter Pryor makes the case that British culture has proved remarkably resilient: "It would take far more than a handful of new coins, or an army of Brussels bureaucrats, to harm it. If prehistory teaches us anything, it is that we must learn to think in the long term. One day, maybe in a few centuries' time, our survival, perhaps not just as a nation but as a species, could depend on it." A blinding way to conclude an outstanding book.
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