Stonehenge - Hardcover

Rosemary Hill is a distinguished independent scholar and award-winning author. She is a Trustee of the Victorian Society and a member of the editorial board of the London Review of Books.

Many books seek to tell “the truth about Stonehenge,” ranging from exact measurements of its various stones to theories about its original use. Hill’s is less concerned with some inarguable truth than with the history of various interpretations of Stonehenge. So what if historical evidence absolutely disproves the idea that the famous circle of stones is a druidic site, since it was built several millennia before the Celts with their druid priests arrived on British shores? For several hundred years, people have believed that Stonehenge is connected to the druids, so ardently that public outcry eventually drove the government, which had closed the monument to keep it from vandalism and other deterioration, reopened it for latter-day druidic ceremonies on the summer solstice. Such is the power of the most popular understanding of Stonehenge. Readable and well-researched, this is an excellent primer on that and the other, varying ways that people have interpreted the enigmatic and iconographic arrangement of stones, ranging from theater for human sacrifice to “carhenge” and other ironic re-creations. --Patricia Monaghan