>"I have the map and the key to the mountain that was used in the film in a frame," he notes. "And I have Thorin's sword and his oaken shield. It's on my bookshelf!"

Eleven years ago, Tolkienites rejoiced as The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey landed in UK cinemas. With Lord of the Rings director, Peter Jackson, at the helm, a legion of actors including Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen, Cate Blanchett, and Orlando Bloom signed on to star.

Joining them, British actor Richard Armitage won the role of Thorin Oakenshield – the legendary King of Durin's folk. Determined to reclaim the Lonely Mountain from Smaug, and secure the coveted Arkenstone, Thorin's redemptive story of greed made him one of the most interesting characters in the trilogy.

Reflecting on The Hobbit's enduring legacy and the profound effect that the franchise had on him, Richard, 52, spoke exclusively to HELLO! about his time on set.

On why the role of Thorin was so special to him, Richard explained: "It had an impact on me because I think The Hobbit was one of the first books I ever read where I really allowed my imagination to engage.

"I was completely absorbed by Tolkien. Then I found Lord of the Rings and I think it was where my early feelers were going towards being an actor, but I didn't realise it at the time," he continued.

"So, when I came to playing Thorin Oakenshield as a 40-year-old, I was retracing my steps right back to being an eight-year-old in school and finding that book for the first time. So, it was just such a massive thing for me."

As for his time on set, Richard revealed a particularly poignant memory from day one of production.

"One of the fondest memories I had was on the very first day of shooting when Peter Jackson blessed his new sound stage with a Māori Haka. I had to speak Māori to the crew because they saw my character as the King of the Dwarves," he tells HELLO!.

"And so they asked me to make this speech in Māori and the door was lifted and the sun was rising across the floor and it was incredibly moving. It was a really special moment."

After wrapping the trilogy with The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014), Richard was able to take home a number of his most treasured possessions from the set, which he continues to cherish.

"I have the map and the key to the mountain that was used in the film in a frame," he notes. "And I have Thorin's sword and his oaken shield. It's on my bookshelf!"

After the success of the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, Tolkeinites have since entered the Rings of Power era, following the release of Amazon Prime's high fantasy series in 2022.

With the show renewed for a second season, naturally, we had to ask if Richard would be interested in a role of some sort. "I mean, I would love to, but I think it's very hard to do that. I'd have to be a different character because you couldn't bring Peter Jackson's version of Thorin Oakenshield into somebody else's. But I love the story," he said.

"From a first-time appearance of the Divination classroom to surprise Boggarts and the Monster Book of Monsters, the Studio Tour is celebrating 20 years of Prisoner of Azkaban in the most fantastic of ways this summer - with plenty of new additions to look forward to.

Warner Bros. Studio Tour London is inviting us all to "Return to Azkaban" from 1st May, promising a fresh selection of props, costumes and sets all dedicated to the beloved third instalment of the Harry Potter series.

The biggest addition will be a first-time instalment of Professor Trelawney's Divination classroom, complete with velvet pouffes, patterned rugs and a tower made of 500 vintage teacups. (Well, we know Sybill loves her tea leaves!)

Beyond the Divination classroom, fans will be able to discover the interior of the famous triple-decker Knight Bus, as a full cross-section of the set will be displayed. Be amazed at the Knight Bus in action as the set rattles the beds, just as they did when bus driver Ernie made his bumpy ride with Harry through London.

Of course, the third Harry Potter story also gave us our favourite Defence Against the Dark Arts professor (not that it was a tough contest) in Professor Lupin. To pay homage, the Studio Tour will reveal a new section of the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom on display, complete with the Art Nouveau-style Boggart wardrobe and that sinister Boggart jack-in-the-box. We hope you've been practising "Riddikulus"! WBSTL-return-to-azkaban-2024-key-art-landscape

Other highlights of Return to Azkaban include stepping foot into the magnificent Great Hall under an enchanted ceiling filled with over 100 floating candles, before being regaled by the Hogwarts Frog Choir and seeing The Monster Book of Monsters go on a rampage in Harry’s room at the Leaky Cauldron. Sounds like a perfect day out!

New for 2024, Return to Azkaban will run from 1st May – 4th September and all new features are included in the ticket price. Check the official website for all the details you need and to book your tickets.

***

It looks fun. PoA is my favourite film of the lot.

Oscar-winning actor Gary Oldman starred in the Harry Potter movie series as Sirius Black, and the actor credits the role with making him a better father. But Oldman didn't love everything about the Harry Potter series. On the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Oldman said his performance in the films was "mediocre."

"I think my work is mediocre in it," Oldman said. "No, I do. Maybe if I had read the books like Alan [Rickman], if I had got ahead of the curve, if I had known what's coming, I honestly think I would have played it differently."

"It's like anything, if I sat and watched myself in something and said, 'My god, I'm amazing,' that would be a very sad day, because you want to make the next thing better," he said.

Also during the interview, Oldman revealed what he thought was the hardest scene to film in the Harry Potter series. He said this was the scene in Prisoner of Azkaban when he's lying by a frozen lake, with his soul leaving his body. Oldman said this took about a week to film, and all the time, he was just lying down and getting very cold and uncomfortable. "The hardest thing I had to do was lie next to a frozen lake," he said.

Interview on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAO2y3kqkl0

I've never seen these before or perhaps my eyes glossed over the 'notice me not' charms on them, but they look amazing.

> I was binge-watching the DVDs with my wife, Sarah, when it hit me: Middle-earth does exist, and I don’t need a portal. I can fly there in 23 hours. I turned to Sarah and said, “Shall we move to New Zealand?” One of the many things I love about my wife is that she listens to my madder ideas with a careful seriousness. Six months later we were in Auckland.

This has strong Bilbo Baggins vibes lol.

What The Hobbit Animated Movie Did Better Than the Peter Jackson Trilogy

The animated adaptations of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings from the 1970s and 1980s have a bit of a bad reputation these days, but these are not entirely deserved. In particular, Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass’ 1977 TV movie of The Hobbit, with a screenplay by Romeo Miller, gets a lot of things right that Peter Jackson’s three-part live-action film adaptation did not.

The most obvious advantage that the animated version has over the live-action films is its length. The fact that the live-action movies are too long is pretty well-established, but by way of a reminder, the book of The Hobbit is about 300 pages long, with slight variations in each edition. Other books of similar length that have been adapted into films include Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Emma Donoghue’s Room, John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars, and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. One thing all of these have in common, is that they were adapted into one single film, two to three hours long. Pride and Prejudice has also been adapted into a six-hour miniseries by the BBC, but none of them have been stretched out to just under eight hours, which is the combined length of the theatrical cuts of the three live-action Hobbit movies. (They’re just under nine hours if you are watching the extended editions though.)

The Rankin/Bass version of The Hobbit, on the other hand, is a mere one hour and 17 minutes, which you could almost argue is actually too short. The introductions of Elrond—who has an inexplicable crown of stars around his head for no apparent reason—and Beorn, for example, could have done with a little more room to breathe. But for a fairly slight story, a runtime that is a little too short feels like an improvement on a runtime that is far too long.

One thing both versions “get right,” that is, they do it really well, is the music, but the Rankin/Bass film uses music in a different way to the live-action movies. In Jackson’s 2012 film The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Howard Shore’s “Far Over the Misty Mountains Cold,” performed by Richard Armitage and the other dwarves in an incredibly evocative basso profundo voice, is a thing of beauty. The Rankin/Bass The Hobbit also features a musical setting for the same song from the book, and although it lacks the power of that incredible bass voice, it’s a good piece of music in its own right.

But the Rankin/Bass movie doesn’t stop there; it’s actually a musical with relatively short songs being peppered throughout the story. This is a completely valid choice too. Author J.R.R. Tolkien’s books are full of songs, and nearly all of the songs that appear in the film are samplings of Tolkien’s own songs from the book using his lyrics. The only exception is the theme song, “The Greatest Adventure,” which is a complete original.

Making the film as a musical also fits with the overall tone viewers would have expected from Rankin/Bass. The studio was known for its holiday specials—made-for-television, animated or stop-motion films that usually aired around Christmas time. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964) and Frosty the Snowman (1969) had already become holiday staples by the time of The Hobbit. Both heavily featured music and songs, and Rudolph was a musical feature with several different songs included throughout the story. A musical with short songs appearing frequently is something audiences would expect from the Rankin and Bass studio. And they also expected the studio to produce animations aimed at a “family” audience, primarily children. This is the biggest thing Rankin and Bass got right and that the Jackson movies get wrong: The Hobbit is a story for children.

When Tolkien originally imagined The Hobbit in the 1930s, it was as a story for his own children, and was not originally connected to the wider mythology of Middle-earth. It was only as time went on that the story got drawn into his bigger mythmaking project. And while The Lord of the Rings is clearly a novel aimed at an adult readership, The Hobbit is equally clearly intended for a younger audience. Bookshops these days generally shelve it with Middle Grade fiction aimed at children aged roughly eight to 12, not far from Tolkien’s friend C.S. Lewis and his Narnia books (which Tolkien did not like, and probably would not appreciate seeing next to his own work!).

In fairness to Peter Jackson, Tolkien did come to regret the tone and style of The Hobbit. This was partly because it made it stick out like a sore thumb next to his other writing about Middle-earth, but also because Tolkien came to believe passionately that children should not be talked (or written) down to, and that children’s literature did not require some kind of special, slightly silly tone. In a letter to W. H. Auden in 1955, Tolkien said of The Hobbit: “It was unhappily really meant, as far as I was conscious, as a ‘children’s story’, and as I had not learned sense then… it has some of the sillinesses of manner caught unthinkingly from the kind of stuff I had had served to me… I deeply regret them. So do intelligent children.”

There’s an argument to be made, therefore, that The Hobbit should be transformed into something with a darker, more adult tone in an adaptation. Jackson probably felt he had little choice in the matter anyway since his live-action Hobbit movies were prequels to his live-action The Lord of the Rings movies—and those, as is appropriate to The Lord of the Rings, have a tone of high epic fantasy with an intended audience of adults and older teenagers.

But Tolkien regretted the tone and style of The Hobbit, not because he regretted writing it for children, but because he felt that writing for children should not engage in “sillinesses of manner.” It is still a story intended primarily for children, and while of course film adaptations have to make changes, the Rankin and Bass film feels more like it captures the spirit of The Hobbit because it is aimed primarily at children. There are no lewd jokes, the scary sequences are kept at an appropriate level, and of course, the runtime will not test the patience of elementary school aged children too much.

One of the main ways Rankin and Bass make it clear that this is a film intended for children and their families is by deliberately echoing aspects of Disney’s animated films. The decision to make the film a musical is one obvious similarity with Disney’s animated fairy tales, but there are others as well. The similarity in the character design of the dwarves in The Hobbit to the dwarfs from Disney’s 1937 classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is not a coincidence. (By the way, if anyone is wondering, Tolkien was quite particular about the fact that his imaginary creatures were dwarves, as opposed to dwarfs. In his Author’s Note at the beginning of The Hobbit, Tolkien explained that “in English the only correct plural of dwarf is dwarfs, and the adjective is dwarfish. In this story dwarves and dwarvish are used, but only when speaking of the ancient people to whom Thorin Oakenshield and his companions belonged.”)

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To cement the Disney-like feel, the film opens on an image of a big, hard-bound and illustrated book, just like Disney’s Snow White, Pinocchio (1940), Cinderella (1950), Sleeping Beauty (1959), The Sword in the Stone (1963), The Jungle Book (1967), and Robin Hood (1973). Interestingly, Rankin/Bass’ The Hobbit opens on an image of the book, by J.R.R. Tolkien, with the author and the famous first line (“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit”) clearly visible. The end of the movie, on the other hand, shows Bilbo’s in-universe Red Book, titled There and Back Again: A Hobbit’s Holiday, before finishing on an image of the One Ring, glinting in a glass case on Bilbo’s mantelpiece. Both clearly parallel the Disney trope, especially the opening, which places the story firmly in a fictional, “fairtytale” universe.

There are of course some things the Jackson movies got right that the Rankin/Bass version did not. One of the more inexplicable decisions made for the animated movie was to increase the body count of named characters in the climactic Battle of the Five Armies. In Tolkien’s novel, and in Jackson’s film, the only three members of the Company to die are Thorin, Kili, and Fili. Rankin and Bass, however, kill off seven of the Dwarves, only even naming Thorin and Bombur, both of whom die on screen. We can assume that Kili and Fili were among the seven killed and that Balin survived (since he has to go and die in Moria sometime between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings), but it is a mystifying decision, especially since films aimed at children do not usually increase the body count.

The Jackson movies also include some fantastic sequences that, taken on their own, are perfect screen adaptations of scenes from the book. Bilbo’s riddle-game in the dark with Gollum under the Misty Mountains in An Unexpected Journey and his verbal sparring with Smaug in The Desolation of Smaug are near perfect, helped by fantastic performances from Martin Freeman as Bilbo, Andy Serkis as Gollum, and Benedict Cumberbatch as Smaug. The casting is all around pretty perfect, especially Freeman, and while Legolas’ added storyline was controversial, the character really is supposed to be the son of Thranduil, the King of Mirkwood, and it’s rather nice to see him slotted in there, even if the role he is given is not to everyone’s taste.

Overall though, the Rankin/Bass animated adaptation of The Hobbit, whatever its flaws, feels like it captures a bit more of the feel of the book, even if it leans quite heavily toward a more Disney-like tone. And if you have young children, you are almost certainly better off trying to show them this version instead of the live-action films. That is if you are too impatient to wait until they are old enough to read the book!

I've heard some people place a lot of the responsibility for Harry Potter becoming popular at the altar of the US Christian Right. Considering their wealth, reach and influence it seems plausible to me!

What's your recollection of that era?

I haven't even watched the extended US versions of PS (SS) and CoS yet. I'll have to remember to acquire them.

I always catch one or two on TV.

The routine had already been rehearsed. A fight with the snake Nagini was supposed to send Harry Potter flying. And it certainly did that. David Holmes, Daniel Radcliffe’s stunt double, felt the impact, and it hurt. But that was the nature of stunt work. He was always taking a knock, and showing off another bruise.

The next day the team came back to perfect the routine. It still wasn’t quite as spectacular as hoped. So they did what they’d done hundreds of times before: added more weight to the pulley system that would launch Harry so that he would fly through the air faster.

“I knew straight away,” Holmes says today, 14 years later. “I knew I’d broken my neck. I was fully conscious.” He had hit the wall at pace and with such brutality that he was left flopping, like a puppet whose strings had been cut. His boss, the stunt coordinator Greg Powell, asked if he could feel his legs. He couldn’t. That day not only changed Holmes’s life for ever, it changed the lives of so many people on the set of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1. Powell, who had to live with getting it wrong; best friend Marc Mailley, who had to take over from Holmes as the stunt double; actor Daniel Radcliffe, who had been coached in gymnastics by Holmes and adored him. And on it went.

Later that day, it was reported that there had been an accident in pre-production on the set of Harry Potter. “I remember seeing the news report on TV,” says Dan Hartley, then a junior member of the crew working as the video playback operator. “I got on the phone to one of the crew and he told me he’d heard it was Dave and something bad happened. For the next few days we were trading messages and we learned that Dave was paralysed.” Hartley had worked with the team for almost a decade. “Within a month we were meeting on the set and adjusting to this new norm, and it was horrific. I’d known Dave for almost 10 years and we were a very tight crew, and now he wasn’t there. Yet the team was still on the production. We’d lost one.”

***

I meet Holmes at his home in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex. The house would make the perfect setting for a futuristic sci-fi movie. Doors open and shut, lights switch on and off, a lift rises and descends at his command. “I designed the house in my head when I was on the spinal ward,” he says. “The technology I’ve put in place gives me as much independence as possible.”

Holmes grew up in Essex, the middle of three boys. His father is a deacon at the local Baptist church, his mother worked with disabled children for decades. He smiles. “Then her son goes and breaks his neck!” All three boys were super energetic – great fun, but hard work. At the age of five, an outreach team from British Gymnastics visited his school to check out the children’s potential. The three Holmes boys were supple and capable. “My mum took us to Havering Gymnastics Club and she discovered that not only was it the world’s best babysitter, it got rid of the excess energy we had.”

in 2000, he had turned professional and was working as Radcliffe’s stunt double in Harry Potter. For Holmes, it even beat Radcliffe’s job. “You get to be a character without the pressures the actors have. I get to inhabit that character and use my skills as a gymnast to enhance the story.” He was well paid for a glamorous job he loved, a star in his own field, yet he could retain his anonymity. Win-win.

Then there was the Potter family. “Greg was my film father from when I was 14. I was a member of his extended family.” Holmes and Mailley were inseparable, and he soon became close to Radcliffe “Initially, I was Dan’s PE coach. He’d come into the stunt office, we’d shut the door, and I’d let him be a kid. He’d be jumping off Portakabins on to trampolines. We’d do judo, boxing, sword fighting, anything he wanted to do that day. On the first two films he was like my little brother, and by the third film he’d grown into one of my best friends and still is to this day.” Then it all came crashing down.

Holmes knew there hadn’t been something quite right about the rehearsal the day before. Mailley suggested he should take Holmes’s place the following day. Holmes wouldn’t hear of it – it was his stunt and he would be doing it even if it meant taking another whack. At least it shouldn’t be as bad as yesterday, Mailley told him. “It was an old way of doing flight on a wire with weights that is not done any more. It’s banned in the film industry as a result of his accident across all major studios,” Holmes says. “The rehearsal the day before was violent and fast, but we went for something a bit faster and a bit more violent the second day. In stunt rehearsals we were constantly trying to push the boundaries of what stunt action could be, whether that is flying through the air or a 15-minute fight routine.”

So stunt coordinators just added weights on the pulley system to enhance the action? “Yes. I’m not going to go into any more detail. The repercussions from my accident mean nobody will be put in that situation again. And that’s enough for me. It’s much more sophisticated and controlled now.”

Did he sense it was dangerous at the time? “I hope you don’t mind, but I don’t want to relive the most horrific day of my life again. Is that all right?” he says gently. “Listen, thankfully for me, because of this film, my legacy on camera is not now me just hitting that wall 14 years ago. Maybe people will take some positives from the way I handled it, hopefully with a bit of dignity – even though all the dignity is taken away.” Among other things, the accident left him with terrible PTSD. “I’d hear the noise in my head of the crunching of my spinal cord. That would happen as I was falling asleep.”

When things get too upsetting, Holmes seeks refuge in humour. “There’s a lot of jokes I want to tell you, but I won’t.” Go on, I say. “Voldemort hit me with a spell –Wingardiumquadriplegia.” He laughs. “That’s a cracking joke. Part of me would love to do the Edinburgh festival.”

Look, he says, he was a stuntman – of course, he knew he was being paid to take chances. In hospital, despite being paralysed, he again began to feel he was lucky. “I was a stuntman, I did a risky job, and I was put in a ward with two boys who were there because of hate. One was caught up in the Mumbai terrorist attack – he’s now one of my best friends, Will Pike. The other boy, Oliver Hemsley, was walking on the road in Whitechapel and he was stabbed in the neck and the chest because he’s gay. Then they kicked a bottle of gin into his chest and he had to have his heart taken out [temporarily, and massaged]. They urinated on him as well. So I met real victims. Granted, it was not my fault, but it was a stunt accident and I did that job and I had to accept the risks. No stuntman should ever be doing that job unless you fully accept the risks.”

...

In one way, Holmes adapted astonishingly well to his disability – designing his new home from the hospital bed, comforting loved ones, telling his mother there was no point in being angry or bitter. He says Warner Bros, the studio that made the Potter films, acted admirably. “Roy Button, who was head of physical production and had given me many bollockings before, came to my bedside and said, ‘Don’t worry, there’s going to be a process, you’re going to be all right.’ I needed that voice of authority and they’ve always been supportive.”

Was he already worrying about the future financially? “Well, I’d just signed the mortgage. I was starting to own a home. Life was happening.” He had moved into the house with his then girlfriend. But the relationship did not last. “Everything changed. There is not one aspect of your life that is not affected by spinal injury. Nothing is the same.” He pauses. “Apart from one thing – watching a film. That’s the same, so I watch films.”

What was hardest to accept? “It’s all hard. It killed me that I couldn’t go back to work on Harry Potter. I wanted to see Harry through to the end. I’d read all of those books, picturing those action sequences. It killed me. The book behind you has even got my Post-it notes from where I read it and went, ‘There’s a stunt I might be doing.’ I could read the character and picture the stunts I was going to do. No one in the world had that, except me. Honestly, all I wanted to do was go back to work.”

Even though he knew he couldn’t return to work, he refused to accept that he had to change his lifestyle after the accident. He talks about a lost decade, then decides “lost” isn’t quite the right word. “It was a decade of decadence and fun. I’d say I wasn’t grown up enough. The thrills I used to get setting myself on fire and jumping off buildings, I was just trying to find that in the way I could.” Such as? “I’d take groups of people to Ibiza and blow thousands of pounds.” He travelled the world, drove ridiculously fast customised cars he could control with his hands, partied, drank and took drugs. “I was fortunate to have those experiences, but I wasn’t really dealing with this. I was putting it on the back burner and not accepting my disability for what it is, which is a life-changing thing.”

The Boy Who Lived is not just a moving examination of the devastation wreaked on Holmes’s life, but also the profound impact the accident had on others. Greg Powell was at the top of his game when it happened. He is a tough, charismatic, cigar-chomping man who comes from a line of boxers and stuntmen (his father and uncle were Nosher and Dinny Powell respectively). In one of the film’s most powerful moments, he breaks down. “I was the last one to touch him, when he could walk, and the first one to touch him when he couldn’t walk, and that’s an awful feeling. I feel choked up there proper. It hurts, cos I fucked his life right up. He’d have been doing anything he liked now,” he tells Hartley in the film.

Had Holmes been aware of the effect the accident had on Powell? “Yeah, he carries that scar on him every day.” He talks of his mentor with affection. “Greg’s legacy should not just be the stunt accident he was connected to through me. The legacy should be every working-class stuntman he opened the door for, all the action sequences he’s brought to the world, whether that’s Tom Cruise floating with the sweat dripping in the first Mission: Impossible or us making the first broomstick flight.” And has he become known for the accident? “Of course. Death by association. But you know he still goes to work, he takes great precautions with safety – double, triple, quadruple checking, not over-rehearsing stunts any more, not letting the director do too many takes when someone’s taking a whack.”

...

Is there anything he gained from the accident? “Yeah, hugely. I will always say breaking my neck made a man of me. For sure, 100%.” But he believes it’s only over the past few years that he has truly accepted his disability.

There have been terrible lows along the way. In 2019, when he had four spinal surgeries and a brain drain, his mother thought she was going to lose him. He says he was in such pain, he no longer cared. “I asked not to be resuscitated. I told my surgeon: if you get into complications, let me go. The mix of medication, pain and irritability all kicked into a state of hopelessness.” Did he actively want to die? “No, but I thought if it happens, I’ll be happy to. I’m cool. I’ve had a good crack.” How long did the hopelessness last? He grins. “Not long.”

He came back fighting harder than ever. Now, he says, there is so much he is doing and still wants to do. He has recorded 41 episodes of a podcast series called Cunning Stunts, in which he interviewed stunt performers with the help of his old friend Radcliffe. There is a lovely generosity to Holmes. As with Mailley, he tells me how happy he is to have seen Radcliffe, who is one of the producers on The Boy Who Lived, evolve and grow. “He’s my boy, isn’t he? I love him. I love him. I’m so proud of him. You think of how many child stars don’t make it through that pressure, that whirlwind. Every time I see his physicality, to know I had just a little input into that brings me joy.” What does he mean? “Look at him, he’s ripped!”

...

Then there’s his plan to launch a stunt studio to enable working-class kids to get a foothold in the industry. He was lucky, he says – Powell gave him his start. To become a professional stunt performer in Britain you have to sign up to the British Stunt Register. To do that, you need exceptional skills in at least six sporting disciplines. And it is almost impossible to acquire those skills without private coaching. Holmes was one of the few exceptions because he earned enough money as a teenager on the Harry Potter films to pay for his own coaching. “Right now we can only have posh boys training for the stunts register. Scamps like me who were born in Romford could not afford to train for the stunt register. We shouldn’t be in the situation where Marc can’t find black boys to double black actors because the socioeconomic background doesn’t allow for it. So that’s my big dream.” Another grin. “It would cost 35 million quid. But I’ve got some connections.”

One reason Holmes has renewed hope is that a year ago he began a relationship with Rosie, a woman who was left even more severely disabled than him after a car crash at the age of 19. “At the moment she has a team of 14 looking after her – her needs are more complex than mine. She’s beautiful. She’s all woman. I fell in love with her over words on email. The greatest way. I didn’t even see her face. It was so natural,” he says. “It took four people to get us close enough for our first kiss, but it was worthwhile.”

Despite his positivity, Holmes’s long-term prognosis is poor. His life expectancy is 65. “My dad’s 65 now. That’s a lot taken off. My surgeon said to me, ‘Breathing, speech and swallowing independently, you’ll be lucky to keep all three.’ That ain’t easy to face.” As for the pain, he says, it’s constant. “It feels like I’ve got 10 elephants standing on top of my head. I’ve got so little muscle structure holding its weight. I’d do 30 years in prison if I could do a handstand again. There’s no amount of fuckery compared to what I have to live with. This is hard. This is the biggest test I can think of, particularly for someone who needed to move as much as I did.”

He hopes the film will give people an accurate sense of his life, for good and bad. Is he pleased with it? “I haven’t watched it. I’m just not ready yet. I live it every day, I don’t need to see it. I know there will be a time in my life when I get in bed and won’t get out of it, and that’s when I’ll watch the film.” For now, he says, there’s no need to think about that time. “Why look death in the face? Push him down the road. Kick him up his arse.”

\- David Holmes: The Boy Who Lived is on Sky Documentaries and Now from 18 November in the UK and on HBO on 15 November in the US. *** article cut down to around half of original wordcount.

Harry Potter star Miriam Margolyes has given a rare glimpse into her relationship with partner Heather Sutherland.

Appearing on The Graham Norton Show on Friday night (November 3) to promote her new book, Oh Miriam!, the actress commented on her 54-year relationship, revealing that the couple live apart but now have plans to live together.

"We are together, but we live apart. She is in Amsterdam, and I am in London but now we want to live together," she said. "I really do want to live with her because we are old, and we haven't got much time left. It is silly to live apart."

Margolyes appeared on the sixth episode of the late-night chat show's latest series, alongside Succession star Sarah Snook, The Morning Show's Greta Lee and pop legend Boy George.

Margolyes will be on our screens again soon as she is set to join David Tennant in the upcoming 60th-anniversary specials of Doctor Who, which premiere on Saturday, November 25.

https://www.digitalspy.com/showbiz/a45743787/harry-potter-miriam-margolyes-relationship-update/

***

Trainee train drivers have been sought for one of the world's most scenic rail routes.

ScotRail said the new personnel would be based in Fort William and were likely to regularly travel the West Highland Line.

The line connects Glasgow with Oban and also Fort William and Mallaig, taking passengers through places that have featured in films and on TV.

The locations include Glenfinnan, which has appeared in the Harry Potter films.

The West Highland Line was voted the top rail journey in the world by readers of independent travel magazine, Wanderlust, in 2009.

The route's stations include Corrour, dubbed the highest at 408m (1,339ft) above sea level and most remote station in the UK. It appeared in the 1996 film Trainspotting, which starred Ewan McGregor.

Scenes for Harry Potter and the Chambers of Secrets and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban were shot at the Glenfinnan Viaduct. The privately-run Jacobite steam locomotive also featured in the films.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-67337137

***

Harry Potter star Matthew Lewis has joined the cast for the second series of Avoidance, the BBC series from Romesh Ranganathan.

In addition to Harry Potter, Lewis has had roles on All Creatures Great and Small, Happy Valley and Ripper Street, with the star also appearing in the Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts special last year.

https://www.digitalspy.com/tv/a45778870/harry-potter-matthew-lewis-bbc-avoidance/

***

Now, as the wait continues for updates on the Harry Potter TV show, Yates shares his thoughts on Radcliffe's post-Wizarding World career in a recent interview with Looper. The actor has since focused mostly on smaller projects, and Yates has nothing but praise for his former collaborator. Check out the director's full comment below:

> "Dan is fearless, and I've admired what he's been doing. He'll dive into any number of different roles to redefine himself. It's admirable that he keeps trucking, and he's done particularly well recently. So all strength to Dan, and I hope he keeps going. I'm sure he will."

https://screenrant.com/daniel-radcliffe-post-harry-potter-career-yates-response/

Harry Potter Director Says Fantastic Beasts Is ‘Parked’ For Now

Arresto Momentum.

Harry Potter director David Yates has confirmed that Fantastic Beasts is on hold, for now. During an interview with Total Film, the filmmaker offered an update on Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

“With Beasts, it's all just parked,” he said. “We made those three movies, the last one through a pandemic, and it was enormous fun, but it was tough.”

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore was the last to film, and while fans originally thought Beasts would be a trilogy, J.K. Rowling confirmed there were actually five films planned. "We knew that from the start, and we set a trilogy as a kind of placeholder,” she said. “But we've now done the plotting, so we're pretty sure there's going to be five movies.”

However, making the sequel wasn’t exactly smooth sailing. “We were actually filming when there wasn't a vaccine,” said Yates. “Thankfully, no one got sick, but we did have the most detailed protocols in place.”

On top of difficulties with filming, the film just didn’t do very well. Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore earned just $407.2 million at the global box office, based on a $200 million budget.

“We're all so proud of [Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore],” added Yates. “When it went out into the world, we just needed to sort of stop and pause, and take it easy.”

When it comes to box office performance, 2016's Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them was a commercial success, grossing more than $800 million worldwide, even though its opening weekend numbers fell short compared to the rest of the franchise. However, The Crimes of Grindelwald suffered a 20% decline, earning $650 million globally, with The Secrets of Dumbledore only dwindling further.

Crucially, it was critically panned, with IGN giving it just 4/10. Our Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore review said: “While Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore finally makes Dumbledore canonically gay, it does little else of note, remaining scattered across half a dozen inconsequential subplots for most of its runtime. It looks drab and feels like it was made by people who want to leave its magical premise behind, even though the series refuses to have anything resembling grown-up politics or perspectives.”

Unfortunately, the future of the franchise reportedly rested on the fate of The Secret of Dumbledore, so it’s unsurprising to see Warner Bros. shelve Fantastic Beasts, at least for the time being.

Want to read more about Harry Potter? Check out Daniel Radcliffe’s documentary about his Harry Potter stunt double as well as how to watch the Harry Potter movies in chronological order.

Daniel Radcliffe produces film about his paralysed Harry Potter stunt double

Documentary tells story of David Holmes who sustained a spinal injury during filming of The Deathly Hallows: Part 1

!image

***

Daniel Radcliffe has teamed up with his Harry Potter stunt double, who became paralysed after an on-set accident, for an HBO documentary. David Holmes worked closely with Radcliffe on the Harry Potter films until he sustained a spinal injury during filming for The Deathly Hallows: Part 1 in January 2009. The gymnast from Essex, who was selected to play Radcliffe’s double in the first film, broke his neck and was paralysed from the chest down.

The forthcoming documentary, titled David Holmes: The Boy Who Lived, is executive produced by Radcliffe and debuts in November. It will feature candid personal footage shot over the last decade, behind-the-scenes material from Holmes’s stunt work, scenes of his current life and intimate interviews with Holmes, Radcliffe, and others.

“The film is a coming-of-age story of stuntman David Holmes, a prodigious teenage gymnast from Essex, England, who is selected to play Daniel Radcliffe’s stunt double in the first ‘Harry Potter’ film, when Daniel is just 11,” the official synopsis from HBO said.

“Over the next 10 years, the two form an inextricable bond, but on the penultimate film a tragic accident on set leaves David paralysed with a debilitating spinal injury, turning his world upside down. As Daniel and his closest stunt colleagues rally to support David and his family in their moment of need, it is David’s extraordinary spirit of resilience that becomes their greatest source of strength and inspiration.”

HBO said the film, which is directed by British filmmaker Dan Hartley, reflects universal themes of living with adversity, growing up and forging identities in an uncertain world.

Holmes, who is now 42, has previously revealed details of his tragic accident, which occurred during a flying scene at Warner Bros Studios in Leavesden.

In an interview with the Mirror in 2014, he said he was pulled backwards “at speed” by a high-strength wire in a “jerk back” stunt that replicates the effects of an explosion. However, Holmes was launched into a wall and immediately broke his neck.

He has said the new HBO documentary tells the story of not just his achievements in front of the camera, “but also the challenges I face every day, and my overall attitude to life after suffering a broken neck. “In the turbulent world we find ourselves living in right now, I would like to quote Harry: ‘We are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided.’”

Holmes also thanked medical staff, Radcliffe and the Harry Potter author, JK Rowling, for their support. Writing about Radcliffe, he said they were both “immensely proud of our time on the Harry Potter films, and the joy and comfort it brings to audiences around the world on a daily basis.”.

It is not the first time Radcliffe and Holmes have collaborated since the Harry Potter films – in 2020 the pair joined forces to launch Holmes’ Cunning Stunts podcast, which features interviews with other stunt performers across Hollywood.

“I think there’s a myth around stuntmen that they are just superhuman in some way,” Radcliffe said of the podcast at the time. “When the public see something really painful or horrible, they think it was a visual effect or that there’s some clever, safe way of doing it. Often that’s not the case.

“There’s no way of faking, for example, falling down stairs. When you get hit by a car, you’re still getting hit by a car, even if it’s going slower than it would. They find the safest way of doing it, but it can still hurt.”

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/12865151

Witch-hunting in 17th-century Scotland was so well paid that it attracted some blatant fakers – Susan Morrison

> A witch-hunter nicknamed ‘The Bloody Juglar’ appears to have used a retractable needle to prick his victims without drawing blood, while another responsible for the deaths of many innocent women turned out to be a woman herself

***

At Spynie Palace in 1662, John Innes of Leuchars had a serious problem on his hands. Local people were complaining to him about milkless cows, shrivelling crops and dying children. Pretty obvious that a witch was on the loose. As the local law enforcement thereabouts, John was expected to do something, but witch-hunting was not in Mr Innes’s skill set.

It must have been a relief when a slight young man almost magically appeared in front of him: John Dickson’s the name, and witch-hunting’s the game. Bags of experience. Happy to sort the problem out. Possibly dropped the name of superstar witch-hunter John Kincaid into the conversation, a Tranent man with a fearsome reputation as Scotland's most fearsome witch pricker or ‘brodder’.

The Scots didn't do witch-ducking. We went for the needle. The Devil gave his followers marks somewhere on their bodies. Where the Devil left his mark, there would be no blood, and no pain. Kincaid and his like would use the needle to ‘prick’ the accused. The words prick and needle are misleading. This needle was no dainty thing to be lost easily in a haystack. These were more like hefty great crochet hooks. The ‘pricking’ was more of a violent slam into the body.

The mark could be anywhere. The accused were stripped and shaved, and the needle plunged in. Some victims didn’t move, scream or bleed – the mark had been found. Possibly they couldn’t move. They may have been in deep shock. These were pious times.

Women rarely left home without covering their heads, now they stood publicly naked, shaved and exhausted. There may well have been little or no bleeding, if the needle hit a part of the body with a poor blood supply. Or perhaps the needle was retractable.

There are clues to such trickery. In the late 17th century, a witch-hunter nicknamed “The Bloody Juglar” turned up in Berwick-upon-Tweed. Pretty quickly his trusty needle pricked a victim and drew no blood. A witch, ready for trial and execution. Hold up, said Colonel Fenwick, the town’s military governor. He called in the mayor and the magistrates. He was worried that this evidence was falsely procured. He had his suspicions about that needle.

Why not get The Bloody Juglar to do the pricking again, but with a council-provided needle? Our boy baulked – “by no means would he be induced unto”. To the good people of Berwick, this “was a sufficient Discovery of Knavery”. The Juglar was busted.

John Kincaid may have been a knave, but between 1649 and 1662 he rampaged freely. It was lucrative. He pocketed £6 for a discovery of a witch at Burntcastle estate. They chucked in another £3 to cover the booze bill for him and his manservant.

The year 1659 was a busy one. Kincaid seems to have pricked profitably in East Lothian, where 18 accused witches were executed. In 1661, Forfar was so chuffed with his efforts that they gave him the freedom of the burgh.

Perhaps young John Dickson was inspired by Kincaid. Seemed a good trade for a lad, finding God's enemies and being very well paid for it, too. John headed north, fetched up at Spynie Palace and appeared before the harassed Innes, who wasted no time in signing up his new witch-hunter to an exclusive contract.

John was on a good retainer with performance-related bonuses, six shillings a day expenses plus £6 per witch caught. In no time at all, our man on the make had two servants and a very fancy horse. He was on-call and carried out witch-pricking in Elgin, Forres, Inverness and Tain. He possibly pricked Isobel Goudie, Scotland’s most famous witch.

He had a particular take on the procedure. Folk called him the Pricker “because of his use of a long brasse pin”. He had his victims stripped naked, then the “spell spot was seen and discovered. After rubbing over the whole body with his palms.” In a vicious witch-hunt/clan war in Wardlaw on the banks of Loch Ness, 14 women and one man were treated so savagely under John’s direct supervision that some of them died.

Our boy was on a roll, until he did something stupid. He pricked a man named John Hay, a former messenger to the Privy Council. Now, this was not a man to mess with. He had connections. He wrote to Edinburgh complaining in an incredibly civil servant manner, denouncing the witch-pricker who worked on his case as a “cheating fellow” who carried out the torture without a licence. Even witch-hunters need the correct paperwork.

The Privy Council in Edinburgh agreed. They called the maverick Mr Dickson in for a word. And they made a terrible discovery: John Dickson was a woman. Her name was Christian Caddell, and she came from Fife. Oh, she could tell a witch, no doubt about it. She claimed she spotted them by looking into their eyes and seeing an upside-down cross.

Of course, this was not the scientifically accepted manner of witch-finding. A needle must be used. And, obviously, you needed to be a man.

Christian stood trial, not for fake witch hunting, torturing or even for those murderous deaths, but for wearing men’s clothing. She was sentenced to transportation, and on May 6 she sailed from the port of Leith on the ship Mary, bound for Barbados.

On the day she left Scotland, Isobel Elder and Isabel Simson, pricked by John Dickson, aka Christian Caddel, were burned in Forres. Just because you were discovered to be a witch in the wrong way didn’t mean to say you were innocent. They were the last two victims of the cross-dressing counterfeit witch-pricker.

Witch-hunting in 17th-century Scotland was so well paid that it attracted some blatant fakers – Susan Morrison

> A witch-hunter nicknamed ‘The Bloody Juglar’ appears to have used a retractable needle to prick his victims without drawing blood, while another responsible for the deaths of many innocent women turned out to be a woman herself

***

At Spynie Palace in 1662, John Innes of Leuchars had a serious problem on his hands. Local people were complaining to him about milkless cows, shrivelling crops and dying children. Pretty obvious that a witch was on the loose. As the local law enforcement thereabouts, John was expected to do something, but witch-hunting was not in Mr Innes’s skill set.

It must have been a relief when a slight young man almost magically appeared in front of him: John Dickson’s the name, and witch-hunting’s the game. Bags of experience. Happy to sort the problem out. Possibly dropped the name of superstar witch-hunter John Kincaid into the conversation, a Tranent man with a fearsome reputation as Scotland's most fearsome witch pricker or ‘brodder’.

The Scots didn't do witch-ducking. We went for the needle. The Devil gave his followers marks somewhere on their bodies. Where the Devil left his mark, there would be no blood, and no pain. Kincaid and his like would use the needle to ‘prick’ the accused. The words prick and needle are misleading. This needle was no dainty thing to be lost easily in a haystack. These were more like hefty great crochet hooks. The ‘pricking’ was more of a violent slam into the body.

The mark could be anywhere. The accused were stripped and shaved, and the needle plunged in. Some victims didn’t move, scream or bleed – the mark had been found. Possibly they couldn’t move. They may have been in deep shock. These were pious times.

Women rarely left home without covering their heads, now they stood publicly naked, shaved and exhausted. There may well have been little or no bleeding, if the needle hit a part of the body with a poor blood supply. Or perhaps the needle was retractable.

There are clues to such trickery. In the late 17th century, a witch-hunter nicknamed “The Bloody Juglar” turned up in Berwick-upon-Tweed. Pretty quickly his trusty needle pricked a victim and drew no blood. A witch, ready for trial and execution. Hold up, said Colonel Fenwick, the town’s military governor. He called in the mayor and the magistrates. He was worried that this evidence was falsely procured. He had his suspicions about that needle.

Why not get The Bloody Juglar to do the pricking again, but with a council-provided needle? Our boy baulked – “by no means would he be induced unto”. To the good people of Berwick, this “was a sufficient Discovery of Knavery”. The Juglar was busted.

John Kincaid may have been a knave, but between 1649 and 1662 he rampaged freely. It was lucrative. He pocketed £6 for a discovery of a witch at Burntcastle estate. They chucked in another £3 to cover the booze bill for him and his manservant.

The year 1659 was a busy one. Kincaid seems to have pricked profitably in East Lothian, where 18 accused witches were executed. In 1661, Forfar was so chuffed with his efforts that they gave him the freedom of the burgh.

Perhaps young John Dickson was inspired by Kincaid. Seemed a good trade for a lad, finding God's enemies and being very well paid for it, too. John headed north, fetched up at Spynie Palace and appeared before the harassed Innes, who wasted no time in signing up his new witch-hunter to an exclusive contract.

John was on a good retainer with performance-related bonuses, six shillings a day expenses plus £6 per witch caught. In no time at all, our man on the make had two servants and a very fancy horse. He was on-call and carried out witch-pricking in Elgin, Forres, Inverness and Tain. He possibly pricked Isobel Goudie, Scotland’s most famous witch.

He had a particular take on the procedure. Folk called him the Pricker “because of his use of a long brasse pin”. He had his victims stripped naked, then the “spell spot was seen and discovered. After rubbing over the whole body with his palms.” In a vicious witch-hunt/clan war in Wardlaw on the banks of Loch Ness, 14 women and one man were treated so savagely under John’s direct supervision that some of them died.

Our boy was on a roll, until he did something stupid. He pricked a man named John Hay, a former messenger to the Privy Council. Now, this was not a man to mess with. He had connections. He wrote to Edinburgh complaining in an incredibly civil servant manner, denouncing the witch-pricker who worked on his case as a “cheating fellow” who carried out the torture without a licence. Even witch-hunters need the correct paperwork.

The Privy Council in Edinburgh agreed. They called the maverick Mr Dickson in for a word. And they made a terrible discovery: John Dickson was a woman. Her name was Christian Caddell, and she came from Fife. Oh, she could tell a witch, no doubt about it. She claimed she spotted them by looking into their eyes and seeing an upside-down cross.

Of course, this was not the scientifically accepted manner of witch-finding. A needle must be used. And, obviously, you needed to be a man.

Christian stood trial, not for fake witch hunting, torturing or even for those murderous deaths, but for wearing men’s clothing. She was sentenced to transportation, and on May 6 she sailed from the port of Leith on the ship Mary, bound for Barbados.

On the day she left Scotland, Isobel Elder and Isabel Simson, pricked by John Dickson, aka Christian Caddel, were burned in Forres. Just because you were discovered to be a witch in the wrong way didn’t mean to say you were innocent. They were the last two victims of the cross-dressing counterfeit witch-pricker.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/12600657 ***

Seventeenth-century English antiquarians thought that Stonehenge was built by Celtic Druids. They were relying on the earliest written history they had: Julius Caesar’s narrative of his two unsuccessful invasions of Britain in 54 and 55 BC. Caesar had said the local priests were called Druids. John Aubrey (1626–1697) and William Stukeley (1687–1765) cemented the Stonehenge/Druid connection, while self-styled bard Edward Williams (1747–1826), who changed his name to Iolo Morganwg, invented “authentic” Druidic rituals.

Druidism has come a long way since. In 2010, The Druid Network was listed as a charity in England and Wales, essentially marking the official recognition of Druidism as a religion. (74,000 called themselves Druids in a recent census.) Historian Carole M. Cusack positions Druidism as one of the branches of the tree of Paganism and/or New Age-ism(s), which burst into all sorts of growth during the twentieth century. Modern Druidism fits into the smorgasbord of what Cusack calls the “deregulated spiritual marketplace” of our times.

But there’s a disconnect here. In the popular imagination, Stonehenge and Druidism now go together like tea and crumpets. Historically, Stonehenge, a product of Neolithic Britain, predates Caesar by thousands of years. It had nothing to do with Druids and certainly nothing to do with modern Druidism.

“The false association of [Stonehenge] with the Druids has persisted to the present day,” Cusak writes, “and has become a form of folklore or folk-memory that has enabled modern Druids to obtain access and a degree of respect in their interactions with Stonehenge and other megalithic sites.”

Meanwhile, archaeologists continue to explore the centuries of construction at Stonehenge and related sites like Durrington Walls and the Avenue that connects Stonehenge to the River Avon. Neolithic Britons seem to have come together to transform Stonehenge into the ring of giant stones—some from 180 miles away—we know today. Questions about construction and chronology continue, but current archeological thinking is dominated by findings and analyses of the Stonehenge Riverside Project of 2004–2009. The Stonehenge Riverside Project’s surveys and excavations made up the first major archeological explorations of Stonehenge and surroundings since the 1980s. The project archaeologists postulate that Stonehenge was a long-term cemetery for cremated remains, with Durrington Walls serving as the residencies and feasting center for its builders.

The hippie-turned-New Age movements birthed in the 1960s and 1970s resulted in a surge of interest in Stonehenge. Tens of thousands, not all of them Druids, attended the Stonehenge Free People’s Festival starting in 1974. In 1985, the festival was halted by English Heritage, the organization that maintains Stonehenge today, because of the crowds, disorder, and vandalism. Druids were also banned from performing rituals on site. However, English Heritage and the Druids soon came to an understanding: Druids could use the site as long as there was no associated festival.

So the clash of academic archaeology and what might be called folk archaeology comes into stark focus at Stonehenge.

Modern paganism is not without interest, of course, but continuing revelations about prehistory—whether of neolithic Britain or elsewhere—should be a lot more interesting. As are the techniques used to extract data from the past: an example used to telling effect by the Stonehenge Riverside Project is the analysis of lipid remains on pottery: we can tell if the pot held dairy products or the fat of ruminants or pigs, giving insights into the diet four thousand years ago. Another example: strontium isotope in bovine molars show that beef consumed at Durrington Walls was raised at least thirty miles away.

Of course, all this is not as photogenically mysterious/magical as robed Druids in the long shadows of a midwinter sunset. Academic archaeology, which suffers from charges of “elitism” in the reactionary populist politics of anti-intellectualism and anti-science, has a hard time competing with the popular irrationality of mysticism. Maybe the real Stonehenge needs more publicists.

***

Subscribe to !history@lemm.ee and !history@lemmy.ml

Seventeenth-century English antiquarians thought that Stonehenge was built by Celtic Druids. They were relying on the earliest written history they had: Julius Caesar’s narrative of his two unsuccessful invasions of Britain in 54 and 55 BC. Caesar had said the local priests were called Druids. John Aubrey (1626–1697) and William Stukeley (1687–1765) cemented the Stonehenge/Druid connection, while self-styled bard Edward Williams (1747–1826), who changed his name to Iolo Morganwg, invented “authentic” Druidic rituals.

Druidism has come a long way since. In 2010, The Druid Network was listed as a charity in England and Wales, essentially marking the official recognition of Druidism as a religion. (74,000 called themselves Druids in a recent census.) Historian Carole M. Cusack positions Druidism as one of the branches of the tree of Paganism and/or New Age-ism(s), which burst into all sorts of growth during the twentieth century. Modern Druidism fits into the smorgasbord of what Cusack calls the “deregulated spiritual marketplace” of our times.

But there’s a disconnect here. In the popular imagination, Stonehenge and Druidism now go together like tea and crumpets. Historically, Stonehenge, a product of Neolithic Britain, predates Caesar by thousands of years. It had nothing to do with Druids and certainly nothing to do with modern Druidism.

“The false association of [Stonehenge] with the Druids has persisted to the present day,” Cusak writes, “and has become a form of folklore or folk-memory that has enabled modern Druids to obtain access and a degree of respect in their interactions with Stonehenge and other megalithic sites.”

Meanwhile, archaeologists continue to explore the centuries of construction at Stonehenge and related sites like Durrington Walls and the Avenue that connects Stonehenge to the River Avon. Neolithic Britons seem to have come together to transform Stonehenge into the ring of giant stones—some from 180 miles away—we know today. Questions about construction and chronology continue, but current archeological thinking is dominated by findings and analyses of the Stonehenge Riverside Project of 2004–2009. The Stonehenge Riverside Project’s surveys and excavations made up the first major archeological explorations of Stonehenge and surroundings since the 1980s. The project archaeologists postulate that Stonehenge was a long-term cemetery for cremated remains, with Durrington Walls serving as the residencies and feasting center for its builders.

The hippie-turned-New Age movements birthed in the 1960s and 1970s resulted in a surge of interest in Stonehenge. Tens of thousands, not all of them Druids, attended the Stonehenge Free People’s Festival starting in 1974. In 1985, the festival was halted by English Heritage, the organization that maintains Stonehenge today, because of the crowds, disorder, and vandalism. Druids were also banned from performing rituals on site. However, English Heritage and the Druids soon came to an understanding: Druids could use the site as long as there was no associated festival.

So the clash of academic archaeology and what might be called folk archaeology comes into stark focus at Stonehenge.

Modern paganism is not without interest, of course, but continuing revelations about prehistory—whether of neolithic Britain or elsewhere—should be a lot more interesting. As are the techniques used to extract data from the past: an example used to telling effect by the Stonehenge Riverside Project is the analysis of lipid remains on pottery: we can tell if the pot held dairy products or the fat of ruminants or pigs, giving insights into the diet four thousand years ago. Another example: strontium isotope in bovine molars show that beef consumed at Durrington Walls was raised at least thirty miles away.

Of course, all this is not as photogenically mysterious/magical as robed Druids in the long shadows of a midwinter sunset. Academic archaeology, which suffers from charges of “elitism” in the reactionary populist politics of anti-intellectualism and anti-science, has a hard time competing with the popular irrationality of mysticism. Maybe the real Stonehenge needs more publicists.