Second paragraph of third chapter:

It was Jennifer Wexler, the English Heritage historian, who had said so. We were sitting in the café at Stonehenge. Christmas songs were playing: Mariah Carey, The Pogues. I wrote down her words and they came back to me when, a few days later, I visited the hill for myself.

This is a lovely book about exploring ancient monuments – mainly megalithic, but also Roman era – across England, Scotland, Wales and both parts of Ireland. All the favourites are here: Stonehenge, Silbury Hill, the Uffington White Horse, the Cerne Abbas Giant, the Boas Island Janus, Sutton Hoo, the Antonine and Hadrian’s Walls, Claudia Severa, the felled tree of Sycamore Gap. Ross finds archaeologists, druids, enthusiasts, writers, everyone who is moved by the ancient in different ways.

I had not realised that there are people who are building new megalithic-style graves, both for their own families and as a commercial proposition for those who want their cremains to be stored in the old way. (There is a sign up at Sycamore Gap asking people not to scatter human ashes on or around the stump.) One feels that in a society where it has become more difficult to talk about death, the ancient ways may offer a way into that dialogue.

It’s a subject that I love anyway, but I found Ross’s writing lucid and humane, full in on the detail but keeping the connection to the people who are doing today’s research and the long-dead people who they are researching. It has inspired me to make sure that I go to Boa Island next time I am within reach, and to just look around with more open eyes when I am in the relevant parts of the world. Really good book. You can get Upon a White Horse here.