Heritage of Britain [antikvár]

The history of Britain has been one of the most interesting and successful stories in the world; and the island has the richest inheritance of any island, historically and visually. One of the joys of inhabiting an old country is that it is feet deep in the sediment of centuries, of memories and associations, monuments, relics, reminders. Wherever one turns, if one has an eye to see and a mind to explore, there are the memorials of former peoples - a barrow or tumulus on the skyline, a bend in the road revealing the curve of a prehistoric round camp; standing stones, monoliths, hut-circles, where these folk lived and worshipped. There are their artefacts and utensils - which have their own interesting evolutions - their pottery and metal work, their bronze and silver and jewellery to appreciate and enjoy, thousands of years after these things were made. Archaeology is a living and popular pursuit today; but history has this advantage over it, that archaeology can scarcely enter the minds and thoughts of our ancestors. History can.Prehistory is, of course, continuous with history; underneath the skin of the present one can often see the prehistoric surviving. One can glimpse it, with any imagination, in people. No animal has such a range of difference and diversity, of capabilities and inequalities, as man.The historic legacy is, however, much richer and more varied than the prehistoric. One can hardly deny the term architecture to such astounding achievements of barbaric peoples as Stonehenge and Avebury - we see only the ruins of them today; but historic architecture offers us much greater variety. Again, wherever we are in an old country we are surrounded by memorials that speak to us - Roman villas, temples, forts, monuments; Anglo-Saxon or medieval churches, cathedrals, monasteries; castles, fortresses, palaces, country houses of all periods; universities and colleges bequeathed by the Middle Ages or later; in the churches, the tombs of the people who left us these things; their portraits, pictures, possessions, archives; their letters, their hterature; their language (or languages), with their layers of sediment, too, the evidences of their changes of inflexion and usage, fossils of speech. ^Vith these we are entering the inner world of the mind, the legacies of the spirit, with which we are not primarily concerned here.All this adds a whole dimension to our mental experience and enjoyment oflife. But we can do nothing like justice to it all; we can only select and suggest, hoping to be at the least representative. To select the best, and most significant, of men's achievements seems the fairest course and offers most promise. Helpfully for our purpose, societies are remembered on the whole for the finest of their products, their works of genius, their most outstanding spirits, not for the commonplaces of every day. Those we have always with us, and they are not memorable: they simply recur.We shall then be concerned with what stands out, with what is exceptional, that which has often survived because it is exceptional and has been prized through the ages.The very insularity of the island has been the dominant factor through all the later stages of men's story in Britain, right up to yesterday: most significandy, in 1940. The easily navigable, indeed the inviting, waters around the islands have proved no impassable bar to invaders, but they have imposed some impediment (again until recently), some time-lag which has sifted invaders, given the geographical conditions a chance to work upon them and enabled incoming peoples to meet their challenge with deferred responses and work out appropriate solutions. Wave after wave of migrants have come in, each making its own contribution to the creative whole, leavingits silt of cultural products, its evidences and rehcs to the general legacy. Insularity modified the cultures and traditions of the Continent, so that the island and its inhabitants developed their own character and distincdve traits - a process going on all through history.We are not concerned with the shell-heaps of neolithic peoples, primitive hunters before men learned to cultivate the soil and build, or with the remains of their caverns and holes -Prrmous pagis Prehisloric Slonchenge, Salisbury Plain, on midsummer morning.