by Adam Thorpe
Monograph about an enigmatic hill.
A pet gripe of mine is the appalling production quality of most British hardback books, printed on little better than yellowing blotting paper. I have no complaints on that front about this book. In fact, its beautiful production was one of the reasons I bought it.
On Silbury Hill is an entertaining and enjoyable monograph about the largest man-made mound in Europe, whose construction began in the late Neolithic. The book is wonderfully well-written and beautifully illustrated. I enjoyed it a great deal.
OK, I did have one gripe: Thorpe, a poet, makes several digs at science in this book. Indeed, he seems to think poetry and poetic thinking have more to tell us about the world than science. If that's what he truly thinks, he's wrong.