![]() This allows the author to present data selectively. The story is told through several voices, so that at each stage it is that individual's knowledge of events that is being represented. Soon after he adds, "Any mistakes, of course, are entirely my own" (p. In an author's note, he states that "Certain changes have been made for dramatic effect". However, some facts have been altered to suit the author's literary purpose, as he freely admits. Literary licence Īs a form of historical novel, this work draws on recorded information about real archaeology, real people and real events. 119–202).Īn earlier account of the controversy and personalities surrounding the discovery, drawing on unpublished letters and Ipswich Museum MS documentation, was published by Robert Markham in 2002. She becomes the narrator of the chamber excavation part of the story (pp. The effect of the wonderful discovery on her, in particular, forms an important thread in this version of the story. Although she did not lead Basil Brown's excavation, she was the first of the excavators to discover gold items in the burial chamber within the ship, and therefore was at the forefront of it. The novel is the first account of these events in which the role of Mrs. However, by his own account Preston only became aware of the story surrounding the excavation around 2004, and therefore the content is not derived directly from Mrs. Peggy Piggott (wife of Stuart Piggott, afterwards Edinburgh Professor of Archaeology), born Cecily Margaret Preston (1912–1994), but later known to the archaeological world as Margaret Guido. He is also the nephew of one of the excavators of Sutton Hoo, Mrs. John Preston was for many years chief television critic for The Sunday Telegraph newspaper. The author employs a degree of literary licence so that the account in the book differs in various ways from the real events of the Sutton Hoo excavations. ![]() The dust jacket describes it as "a brilliantly realized account of the most famous archaeological dig in Britain in modern times". The Dig is a historical novel by John Preston, published in May 2007, set in the context of the 1939 Anglo-Saxon ship burial excavation at Sutton Hoo, Suffolk, England.
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