Simon Heffer

No Ordinary Surveyor

Bloody Old Britain: O G S Crawford and the Archaeology of Modern Life

By

Granta Books 304pp £14.99 order from our bookshop

There is a type of person one reads about in the sociography of the interwar years, or sees depicted in the films of the period, who represents in an unobvious but profound way the national tragedy of that era. It is the former minor public schoolboy whose social position peaked shortly before he left the cloisters of academe and whose learning and talents were never subsequently put to the use that he believed, possibly quite rightly, they should have been. Life was destined to be a series of tribulations where he was bossed around by idiots and had to confront, with horrid frequency, the stupidity of his intellectual inferiors. It was enough to drive one mad. 

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