Jacquetta Hawkes - A Land

An Interesting Documentary on Jacquetta Hawkes on Sunday http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01mfb2d (might disappear in a week)

 

Jacquetta Hawkes and the Personal Past
Duration: 45 minutes
First broadcast: Sunday 09 September 2012
Christine Finn excavates clues in the personal and public life of once acclaimed archaeologist and writer, Jacquetta Hawkes, to explain why she has faded from public memory.

Jacquetta Hawkes defined archaeology for the post-War generation. Central to the planning of the Festival of Britain, her films and her regular TV and radio appearances ensured she was a public figure; her best-selling 1951 book, A Land, made archaeology accessible in a novel way. When Christine Finn came across it while studying archaeology and poetry, she could not understand why its author had been forgotten, while her second husband, JB Priestley, with whom she wrote and collaborated, remains well known. Finn's excavation throws up clues in Hawkes' personal and public life to explain why she was erased from public memory.

Finn was responsible for rescuing Hawkes' papers after her death and has championed her work as Hawkes' biographer. Now she celebrates the re-issue after 60 years of Hawkes' best known book, A Land. Illustrated by Henry Moore, it was a unique synthesis of art and geology, captivating critics and public alike, and introducing Hawkes' literary trademark: archaeology laced with her own personal past.

In the course of her excavation Christine Finn meets Jacquetta Hawkes' son Nicolas, JB Priestley's son Tom, Emeritus Professor of European Archaeology at Oxford Barry Cunliffe, Roman archaeologist Dr Martin Henig and Professor of Classical Archaeology at Stanford Michael Shanks; and she visits the Hawkes' archive at Bradford University in the company of archivist Alison Cullingford.

Her Book "A Land" was very influential http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=BlRSxLKMfCkC&lpg=PP1&dq=jacquetta%20Hawkes%20A%20land&pg=PT326#v=onepage&q&f=false  (partial view), mixing geology and archaeology with a poetic response to the Britsih Landscape (and expressing an understandable enjoyment in the specificity of a place that had so narrowly escaped Nazi occupation. It was written in 1951. (An impulse in which it shares with WG Hoskins "Making of the English Landscape" 1955 - which it undoubtedly influenced). Jacquetta's book is more poetic and personal. Straddling the arts-humanities-science divides it was more problematic for academic use.


Her Desert Island Disks  selection gives more insights into a brave and sometimes brittle woman, who made no secret and would tolerate no shame for her bisexual past, or for the break with her 1st husband
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/player/p0143kdg
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4/didaf70-86/didaf70-86_19801115-1815a.mp3

her papers are kept by Bradford uni http://www.bradford.ac.uk/library/special-collections/collections/jacquetta-hawkes-archive/


More? try this http://jacquettahawkes.wordpress.com/

Irish Landscape books - worth a squint - nice presents or borrow from your library

I've just received my copy and am reading Valerie Hall's fascinating recently published book on the Irish Landscape
The fascinating story of Ireland's changing landscape begins over 11,000 years ago as the last Ice Age ended. Through a combination of authoritative text and photographs, this easily accessible book describes how the landscape of Ireland has been shaped. It tells the story of how natural forces as well as people influenced the landscape, its plants and animals, and traces the history of the wild places as well as the development of the farmed landscape. The photographs, many of which are of modern subjects, emphasise how the past Irish landscape continues to resonate today. - its says 'ere, DS 

• Publisher: The Collins Press
• Publication date: 10/04/2011
• ISBN-13: 9781848891159

It has a hard act to follow in Mitchell and Ryan's Reading the Irish landscape - which I've long treasured

The authors seek to produce a total insight which synthesises geology, geography and archaeology, with botany and zoology also covered to an extent. Remarkably, they shed stiumulating light on many aspects of the subject by comparisons with parallels elsewhere in the world; thus an early painting of aboriginal fishing in New South Wales, and an early 20th century photo of drying fish in Newfoundland, are set alongside a photograph of Aran Islanders launching a curragh. With this cross-disciplinary approach, technical language is both necessary and problematic; the solution constantly striven for is to keep jargon to a minimum and to define specialist terms as they arise in the text. To a large extent this works; the book can be read by the intelligent lay reader without constant referal to glossaries. 

The later section takes the reader through the effect of human activity on the landscape from prehistory to the present day, in a survey well-illustrated with aerial photos and contemporary prints. ...said one reader

ISBN 1860590551 9781860590559 0946172544 9780946172542

or Fred Aalen et al's Atlas of the Irish Rural Landscape

harnessed the expertise of dozens of specialists to produce an exciting and pioneering study which has two basic aims: to increase understanding and appreciation of the landscape as an important element of national heritage and to provide a much needed basis for landscape conservation and planning. The complex assemblages of features, physical and human, which gives landscapes their distinctive regional character are examined in relation to man-made elements, such as field and settlement patterns, enclosure methods, rural buildings, demesnes, villages and small towns, archaeological/historical monuments, woodland, bogs, communications, and industrial archaeology.

ISBN:	9781859184592 1859184596