Megalith: 11 journeys in search of stones ed. Damian Walford Davies Gomer Press, 128pp, £9.99
Too often claimed by druids, New Agers and - à la Spinal Tap - confused hippies, standing stones occupy a surprisingly kitschy niche in the popular imagination. Megalith, a collection of essays on the dolmens, gallans, cromlechs, quoits and menhirs of the British Isles, provides a broader view, matching 11 writers with their favourite neolithic and Bronze Age monuments.
Though there is still mysticism aplenty - "What a joy to know that there are still matters beyond the ken of science or religion!" rhapsodises Jan Morris - the essays encompass nature notes, psychogeographical ramblings, personal reminiscences, folk stories and astronomical observations. Their eclecticism springs from the cryptic stones themselves: they are "mirrors", writes Damian Davies, "reflecting us back in various forms".
The constant amid this cheerful chaos is the simple fact of the stones' 3,500- to 5,500-year endurance, neatly captured in Bernard O'Donaghue's quotation from the melancholic 17th-century essayist Sir Thomas Browne's Hydriotaphia or Urn-Buriall: "Time which antiquates Antiquities, and hath an art to make dust of all things, hath yet spared these minor Monuments."
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