A personal journey through the Neolithic and Bronze Age

I have followed the rumours, pushed through the brambles and bindweed, I have drawn blood, offered up my pain with bruised heels and blisters, I have woken in the dawn with the mists coiling round my ankles and walked for miles on stony ground, searching for what might not even exist, for a ghost memory, for a forgotten god, for the ritual centre of the old religion and sometimes I have found these places, stumbled onto them with the breath knocked from my lungs, the stones aligning and the sunbeam piercing the centre of it all, dew shattered with every step and the lark calling out exultant, I have been to the grand temple complexes and I have been to the local cult centres, the humble spirit dwellings, I have been all through Wessex and Kernow and up to the ragged islands of the north, braved spiteful winds and wrathful protective gods just to sit there with them and imagine.

Written for me by Luke Davis at the Hay Festival 2025