Writing for Antiquity: An Anthology of Editorials from Antiquity

by Glyn Daniel

For nearly thirty years, until his death in 1986, the well-known scholar, writer and broadcaster Glyn Daniel was editor of Antiquity, the influential review of archaeology. Under his guidance, it became a journal with a difference. In each issue the editor would air eloquently his decided views on matters not just archaeological--finds, hypotheses, personalities--but of interest or amusement to all: the pleasures of the French countryside, the follies of government policy, the five golden rules that a lecturer should observe. Here is a collection of the very best of these entertaining, often passionately written essays. Glyn Daniel's range was wide, his tastes eclectic; but he came back again and again to favorite themes--travel, national attitudes, Stonehenge, the return of the Elgin marbles, smuggling, forgery. Forgery especially fascinated him: "I suppose," he wrote once, "that it is my interest in reading and writing detective stories that rubs off onto the study of archaeological forgery." He also loved to see "those on the edge of the lunatic fringes of archaeology plunge headlong down the lush grass that leads to Atlantis and Tiahuanaco and by long straight green tracks to Glozel and the Druids at Stonehenge." Writing for Antiquity presents Glyn Daniel exactly as he was--a man of letters, a brilliant raconteur and a wit. This is a volume to keep on one's bedside table, to read or dip into for amusement, enlightenment and the charm of the unexpected.

192 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1992

About the author

Aka Dilwyn Rees

Taken from a cover from a book published in 1962:

Dr Glyn Daniel, who has been a Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge, since 1938, and a University Lecturer in Archaeology since 1948, was born in Pembrokeshire in 1914. Proceeding from Barry County School and University College, Cardiff, to Cambridge, he took a 'First' with distinction in archaeology and anthropology, and subsequently was awarded several prizes and studentships and took a Ph.D. in 1938. During the war he served in the R.A.F. and was mentioned in despatches while in charge of air-photo interpretation in India and S.E. Asia, as a Wing-Commander. Since the war he has held several lectureships and achieved a wide popular fame as question master in the TV game, Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral? He is now a director of Anglia Television. Along with golf and squash (both of which he plays badly), travel, food, and wine (taken in France for preference), Glyn Daniel, who is married, regards his detective fiction as a hobby.