I don’t socialise or correspond exclusively with people who share my fascination with the distant past. In my experience, everyone’s heard of Stonehenge, the Druids, the Roman invasion(s) and King Arthur, but far fewer have heard of Avebury, Silbury Hill or Vortigern, while that number dwindles further at the mention of the Cursus, Vespasian’s Camp [...]

The world of the ancients is separated from ours by a vast and ever-increasing gulf of time. Our scientists continue to make astonishing discoveries in the field of physics, but it seems unlikely that any of us will be able to physically travel back across the ages for a long while to come, if ever. [...]