13) The Megalith Builders of Western Europe, by Glyn Daniel
I’ve been fascinated by standing stones and megaliths since I was very young; the Giant’s Ring near Belfast was a favourite family outing when I was growing up, and as a teenager I combed the valleys and drumlins around Loughbrickland at weekends looking for more standing stones. My fascination has spilled over into this livejournal at times as well. However, I didn’t learn a lot from this book, published half a century ago with a 1961 update for the paperback edition explaining that the new-fangled radiocarbon dating meant all their previous chronological assumptions were definitely wrong. Daniel just lists by typology all the known megalithic tombs in different parts of Western Europe, and about the only conclusion you can draw from the book is that the borders between ancient cultures were not where the modern borders are. I would like to find something more up to date, and more interesting, on this subject.
I’m moderately optimistic about this. Certainly I think this story has a long way to run, and I’d be surprised if the Sun, the Mails, the Mirrors, and the Expresses come out completely unscathed. Without a doubt media ownership rules are going to be rewritten, privacy law is going to be revisited, and the back door of Number 10 will be less frequented in future.
It’s a big enough deal that I expect at least one copper to go to jail, and this in a country where the police can murder random strangers on the street in front of hundreds of witnesses and escape jail.