Stonehenge is woven into the earliest Arthurian legends & has been analysed by everyone from archaeologists, to town planners, to the Druids who have made it their spiritual home. By refusing to adopt one theoretical position, Rosemary Hill provides the most wide-ranging & expansive history of the megalithic structure to date, from its creation in 3000 BC to the threat of the thunderous main roads that flank it today. ...

Perched on the chalk uplands of Salisbury Plain, the megaliths of Stonehenge offer one of the most recognizable outlines of any ancient structure. Its purpose
- place of worship, sacrificial arena, giant calendar
- is unknown, but its story is one of the most extraordinary of any of the world`s prehistoric monuments. Constructed in several phases over a period of some 1500 years, beginning c. 3000 BC, Stonehenge`s key elements are its `bluestones`, transported from West Wales by unexplained means, & sarsen stones quarried from the nearby Marlborough Downs. Francis Pryor delivers a rigorous account of the nature & history of Stonehenge, but also places the enigmatic stones in a wider cultural context, exploring how antiquarians, scholars, writers, artists, `the heritage industry`
- & even neopagans
- have interpreted the site over the centuries.



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Today, visitors experience Stonehenge as a wonder of ancient achievement & an enduring symbol of mystery. But Stonehenge was built as a temple
- a place of ceremony, of burial & of celebration. The first Stonehenge was simple
- just a circular ditch & bank, perhaps with a few small upright timber posts or stones
- & was constructed about 5, 000 years ago, in the period of prehistory known as the Neolithic or New Stone Age. By about 2500 BC more & much larger stones had been brought to the site, huge sarsen stones from north Wiltshire & smaller bluestones from west Wales. This marked the beginning of over 800 years of construction & alteration stretching into the period known as the Bronze Age, when the first metal tools & weapons were made. By this time Stonehenge was the greatest temple in Britain, its banks, ditches & standing stones arranged in sophisticated alignments to mark the passage of the sun & the changing seasons. But Stonehenge was just one part of a remarkable ancient landscape. Hundreds of burial mounds clustered on the surrounding hilltops, while smaller temples & other ceremonial sites were built nearby. Stonehenge & these other ancient structures form an archaeological landscape so rich that it is classified as a World Heritage Site. Stonehenge has inspired people to study & interpret it for centuries. Medieval writers suggested magic as an explanation of how it was created; early antiquarians, like William Stukeley in the early 18th century, guessed
- wrongly- that the Druids had built it. Archaeology still provides the best hope of answering some of these fundamental questions about Stonehenge: how & when it was built, who built it &, perhaps most difficult of all, why it was built, But even with the evidence that archaeology & modern science provide, not all these questions can be answered. Stonehenge will always keep some of its secrets.



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Stonehenge & Avebury World Heritage Sites on a large double-sided map from the English Heritage presenting each site on one side of the map at 1:10, 000 annotated with extensive archaeological & tourist information & accompanied by historical notes, colour photos & a time line. The archaeological remains, various tourist facilities & local footpaths, etc are marked on a base derived from Ordnance Survey mapping. Archaeological sites are coloured according to their age (Mesolithic, Neolithic, Bronze, etc), distinguishing between those visible & below surface. The map shows access to the sites & across the surrounding land indicating footpaths, bridleways, restricted byways, National Trails, permissive paths & the Sustrans cycle network with their route numbers. Other information

Includes:: bus stops, car parks, visitors’ centres, public toilets, museums, etc. Each map is accompanied by extensive historical notes, colour photos, plus a tile line comparing the development of the site with events elsewhere in the world.

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Since its first & prize-winning edition of 1983, Stonehenge Complete has established itself as the classic account of this most famous of ancient places. For this new edition, Christopher Chippindale has revised & updated the story to include the latest theories & discoveries. People have puzzled over Stonehenge for centuries, speculating & dreaming about it, drawing & painting it, trying to make sense of it. Here is the story of the one real Stonehenge, as well as the many unreal Stonehenges that archaeologists, tourists, mystics, astronomers, artists, poets, & visionaries have made out of it. New studies in the last decade have revolutionized our knowledge of the complex sequence of structures that make its celebrated profile; remarkably, these new discoveries have been made without new excavations. Stonehenge today is as lively as it ever was. After a period of dissent & confrontation, visitors are once again welcome to see the sun rise over the Heel stone on midsummer solstice day, & some 20, 000 people are expected to gather at midsummer dawn this year. As the new edition explains, they are in error: although Stonehenge is indeed astronomically oriented, it is not aligned on the midsummer sunrise at all. ...

Stewart Gilmour is back in Stonemouth. After five years in exile his presence is required at the funeral of patriarch Joe Murston, & even though the last time Stu saw the Murstons he was running for his life, staying away might be even more dangerous than turning up. An estuary town north of Aberdeen, Stonemouth, with it`s five mile beach, can be beautiful on a sunny day. On a bleak one it can seem to offer little more than seafog, gangsters, cheap drugs & a suspension bridge irresistible to suicides. & although there`s supposed to be a temporary truce between Stewart & the town`s biggest crime family, it`s soon clear that only Stewart is taking this promise of peace seriously. Before long Stu steps back into the minefield of his past to confront his guilt & all that it has lost him, uncovering ever darker stories. Soon his homecoming takes a more lethal turn than even he had anticipated. Tough, funny, fast-paced & touching, Stonemouth cracks open adolescence, love, brotherhood & vengeance in a rite of passage novel like no other. ...

William Stoner enters the University of Missouri at nineteen to study agriculture. A seminar on English literature changes his life, & he never returns to work on his father`s farm. Stoner becomes a teacher. He marries the wrong woman. His life is quiet, & after his death his colleagues remember him rarely. Yet with truthfulness, compassion & intense power, this novel uncovers a story of universal value. Stoner tells of the conflicts, defeats & victories of the human race that pass unrecorded by history, & reclaims the significance of an individual life. A reading experience like no other, itself a paean to the power of literature, it is a novel to be savoured. ...

In this dramatic first-person narrative, Greg Mortenson picks up where Three Cups of Tea left off in 2003, recounting his relentless, ongoing efforts to establish schools for girls in Afghanistan. His work details his extensive voluntary work in Azad Kashmir & Pakistan after a massive earthquake hit the region in 2005 & the unique ways he has built relationships with Islamic clerics, militia commanders & tribal leaders even as he was dodging shootouts with feuding Afghan warlords & surviving an eight-day armed abduction by the Taliban. He shares for the first time his broader vision to promote peace through education & literacy, as well as touching on military matters, Islam, & women – all woven together with the many rich personal stories of the people who have been involved in this remarkable two-decade humanitarian effort. ...

” Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage” is, as Robert Macfarlane says in his introduction, `one of the most sustained, intensive & imaginative studies of a place that has ever been carried out`. That place is one of the most mysterious & oldest inhabited landscapes in the world, the islands of Aran off the west coast of Irel&. Tim Robinson`s epic exploration of the desolate, storm-lashed, limestone rocks, which have already haunted generations of Irish writers, takes the form of a clockwise journey around the coast. Every cliff, inlet & headland reveals layers of myth & historical memory, & Robinson makes beautifully crafted observations about the habits of birds, plants & the humans who lived there & endured, leaving records in stone
- on the walls, cairns & ancient forts
- in story & in oral tradition.

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No empire in history built so variously as the British empire in India: the buildings there attest to the richness of an imperial presence that lasted
- from the first trading settlement to the end of the Raj
- some three hundred years. The attitude of the British to India was compounded partly of arrogance, but partly also of homesickness, & it shows in their constructions. Georgian terraces were adapted to tropical conditions, Victorian railway stations were elaborately orientalized, seaside villas were adjusted to suit Himalayan conditions, & everywhere the fundamental ambivalence of the British empire, a baffling mixture of good & evil, was mirrored in the imperial architecture. This book, now reissued with a new introduction by Simon Winchester, was the first to describe the whole range of British constructions in India. The text & photographs illustrate these buildings not simply as physical objects, but as reflections of an empire`s mingled emotions. Stones of Empire charts an enterprise in architecture, engineering, & social adaptation unique in human history.

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