Britain BC – best book I’ve read for ages

I first came across Francis Pryor by seeing him in history and archaeology programmes on TV, as I guess many people have done. He always seems a cheery, enthusiastic man with a big beard and a smiley face. He also comes across as a person passionate about his subject and in programmes such as Time Team where there is always a challenge and hope something will be found during the archaeological dig, it wasn’t so much his disappointment when little or nothing was found, but his way of looking at the results they had in a positive and constructive way which interested me.

I’ve always been fascinated by history, and did it as part of my degree, but it is ancient history which really enthuses me; my poor family, they have been dragged across muddy fields and up soggy hillsides to look at earthworks and stones! I have written quite a lot about the recent archaeology course I was on and during that I was able to further my interest. A friend lent me some books on archaeology and one of them was a great thick tome, ‘Britain BC – life in Britain and Ireland before the Romans’ by Francis Pryor. It is nearly 500 pages long and I imagined I would dip into it and read up on sites that particularly interested me, including Flag Fen which was discovered by Francis Pryor, and Seahenge which I saw a couple of years ago on a trip to Kings Lynn.

I usually skip prefaces, in fact I think I wrote as much in a post recently, but for some reason I opened the book at the preface and started to read… and was hooked. Dr Pryor writes in such an engaging way and his personality leaps off the page that I read on from the preface and I’m now 300 pages in; he writes with such breadth of knowledge, such passion for his subject and although he is obviously an expert and writes about quite complicated things sometimes, the way he writes opens the subject for anyone with an interest. He links what he is writing about to other cultures and areas of the world, he gives little snippets of detail about other archaeologists and people he has met and worked with, he lets off steam about issues he thinks are important, and when talking about the  building of one feature he actually imagines the people who were doing it and vividly describes how a causeway may have been constructed nearly 6,000 years ago in about 3,800BC.

It is a long time since I have been as gripped by any book, and I can’t think of a non-fiction book which I have ever read which has been such a page turner. It is not populist, it is not a quick gallop through the millennia that people have lived on these islands, it is detailed, erudite,  and utterly enthralling. I borrowed this book but I am going to buy my own copy, and others by Dr Pryor… look out for more reviews!