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Peter Ross has made quite a name for himself in recent years. His previous books, A Tomb with a View: the stories and glories of graveyards (2021) and Steeple Chasing: around Britain by church (2023), both became bestsellers, and I am certain that many readers of Current Archaeology are familiar with them. Their narrative structure, full of well-observed detail alongside some fine anecdotes, make for an engaging and accessible read, and they encourage active engagement in sites up and down the country. Upon a White Horse: journeys in ancient Britain and Ireland follows this format and will, I am certain, sell as well as the two previous volumes – it is a good, fun, well-researched, and highly readable work, so long as you are in the mood for his slightly whimsical writing style.
But, reader beware, this will not be to everyone’s taste. The first main chapter gives a clear sense of what’s to come, which is, perhaps inevitably in a book on this topic, about Stonehenge – and not just Stonehenge in terms of the ancient site, but Stonehenge in terms of its modern-day role as a unique place of pilgrimage for a myriad of different communities and cultural custodians. Some readers will love this – Stonehenge is, after all, a deeply beloved site – but others, this reviewer included, will roll their eyes and cry: ‘What, Stonehenge, again?’. Herein lies the problem: to persuade a publisher to commission a book of this type – a narrative travelogue – it must appeal to the widest possible audience, so the well-known sites must feature alongside the lesser-known. As a notorious Stonehenge-hater, opening there thus put me right off the book at the outset, and I had to persevere with it, to push on into the (to me) more interesting sections on other sites and structures. I am glad that I did, for there is much good here, but the demands on the one hand periodically to land on a ‘big name’ site, and the desire of the author to stick to his whimsical writing style on the other hand, left me regularly sighing with frustration.
The good bits, at least to me, were when Ross visited a lesser-known site and dropped the modern-day anecdote, instead focusing in on the stories of the sites and their historic surveys – I wanted, at heart, to give it a ruthless edit. But I acknowledge that this is a niche, indeed peevish, demand – as I say, Ross’ books sell well, so his formula clearly works for many. And there is much to enjoy here: good writing, good research, good observation. I learned things about some sites that I didn’t know and was encouraged to visit others that I have yet to make it to.
Upon a White Horse travels widely in thematic rather than geographic chapters, so it keeps the reader’s attention. In Chapter 1, ‘Ring’, Stonehenge sits alongside Sighthill Stone Circle in Glasgow, which in turn leads to Kit’s Coty House in Kent. This approach is followed in the subsequent chapters: Chapter 2, ‘Henge’, begins at Silbury Hill and moves on to Avebury; Chapter 3, ‘Loch’, focuses, unusually, solely on the Ballachulish Celtic wooden figure; Chapter 4, ‘Chalk’, with the Uffington White Horse and then Wayland’s Smithy followed by Cerne Abbas; Chapter 5, ‘Grave’, with Sutton Hoo before an unexplained diversion to Denmark to discuss the Egtved Bronze Age bog burial, after which the text moves back to more familiar territory to discuss the bog bodies of ancient Ireland and then the chambered tombs of first Anglesey and later Wiltshire; Chapter 6, ‘Lough’, with prehistoric Lough Erne in Northern Ireland; Chapter 7, ‘West’, with the prehistoric stone monuments of, first, Cornwall, and, later, south-west Wales; Chapter 8, ‘Wall’, with first the Antonine Wall then Hadrian’s Wall; Chapter 9, ‘North’, with the structures of Viking Shetland, then Orkney; and finally Chapter 10, ‘Scion’, concludes the book with a diversion back to Hadrian’s Wall specifically, to the now infamous Sycamore Gap and its recent sad history. As I said earlier, many people will love this book, both its content and its style, but it is, honestly, a slice of archaeological toast thickly spread with Marmite – a strict matter of taste.
REVIEW BY JOE FLATMAN
Upon a White Horse: journeys in ancient Britain and Ireland
Peter Ross
Headline Publishing Group, £22
ISBN 978-1035414062
