Time's Anvil: England, Archaeology and the Imagination - Softcover

Richard Morris is emeritus professor of archaeology at the University of Huddersfield. He began his career working on excavations under York Minster in 1971. Since then he has worked as a university teacher, as director of the Council for British Archaeology, as director of the Leeds Institute for Medieval Studies, and as a writer and composer. His book Churches in the Landscape (1989) is widely regarded as a pioneering classic. Time's Anvil: England, Archaeology and the Imagination was longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize and shortlisted for the Current Archaeology Book of the Year Award. He is completing a new biography of the aeronautical engineer Barnes Wallis, and working on a social history of interwar England from the air.

Combining literature and myth with science, it explores how the past is read and the relevance and role of archaeology while challenging assumptions about our history―CHOICE

A richly textured, and very moving, hybrid of a book: silted, layered, as studded with jewels as the mud around an Anglo-Saxon tomb. The ground beneath your feet - or the keepsakes cleared from a relative's home - will never feel the same again,―Boyd Tonkin, INDEPENDENT

The press release for this remarkable book announces that it 'defies categorisation'. It is not wrong. Longlisted for the Samuel Johnson prize, Time's Anvil contemplates what is now England over a span of 750,000 years.

Sometimes we are left with snapshots, including the varying view from Paviland Cave over the last 29,000 years; elsewhere the text lingers, as with the felling of the Old Wood. Along the way we meet eminent practitioners of many disciplines, as archaeology itself emerges and the stories it tells evolve. 'Archaeology', we are told, 'might be seen as but a late ripple in the cult of ancestors'. An acquired taste, perhaps, but presenting archaeology in this way has created an especially thought-provoking read

―Matthew Symonds, ARCHAEOLOGY.CO.UK

He makes the point that history is always changing, as we find new things, or come to see old things in new ways.

A thoughtful book, intelligent book.

―William Leith, THE SCOTSMAN

[An] undeniably curious book...the story of archeology, mixed with the author's personal and family history, and interspersed with a smattering of scientific discourse, and a fair bit of poetry―BBC HISTORY

This is a remarkable, and in many respects a very courageous book - he puts himself on the line―Francis Pryor, THE TIMES

This fascinating book - a combination of the author's autobiography and a biography of the science of archaeology in England since the 17th century - suggests that some historical truths are found and proved, rather than created, by archaeology―Dr Julian Litten, CHURCH TIMES

This book allows us to regain possession and to make archeology personal again.―THE TIMES

I should have told you about this superb piece of work months ago... It is a wonderful reminder of the extent of human knowledge and how little we can know about our own past. It is possible to hold a Saxon's helmet in your hand but you can't hear the man who wore it speak. This is a wise book, worth the investment.―Thomas Quinn, THE BIG ISSUE

For Morris, this book is an 'expedition' into the past, and as such it is both expansive and singular. But TIME'S ANVIL is also an impassioned history and defence of archeology, a history of humanity in England, and a heartfelt meditation on transience and mortality―Nick Groom, INDEPENDENT