Honor Frost – pioneer of maritime archaeology – was still diving into her 90s. In fact, according to Lucy Blue on the Honor Frost Foundation’s excellent Dive & Dig podcast, she did so in the same kit she had been wearing since the 1960s. With Frost, none of this should come as a surprise.
There are many ways to begin in archaeology, but it is safe to assume no careers advisor ever suggested fitting yourself out with an improvised breathing hose at a London party, as Frost did in order to explore a 17th-century well. Hers was never a normal life. Born in Cyprus, she moved to London as the ward of solicitor Wilfred Evill when her parents died. He was an avid art collector and it seemed Honor would follow him, studying at the Central School of Art and then, in Oxford, the Ruskin School of Art. She created ballet sets – for the Ballet Rambert and Sadler’s Wells – and ran the publications department of the Tate Gallery.
Then, in the 1950s – inspired by the escapade in the well – she joined the Cannes-based Club Alpin Sous-Marin to train as a scuba diver, a discipline then in its infancy. From the very beginning, she pursued her fascination with archaeological rigour, even polishing her drafting skills on land with Kathleen Kenyon at Jericho.
Archaeology and the silver screen