"Malcolm Saville made me an archaeologist"

Thank you to the reader who sent me the link to an account of a talk given at the Hay Winter Festival by the archaeologist Miranda Aldhouse-Green:

In the question and answer session, she was asked what her inspiration for becoming an archaeologist was, and she talked about the books of Malcolm Saville, especially Lone Pine Five, set around the Long Mynd in Shropshire (in fact, set so securely round the Long Mynd that a fan of the books used to lead walks to places that were mentioned in the text). One of the characters finds a Roman spoon in a cave, and that was the moment she decided she wanted to be an archaeologist.

I think that would have delighted the great man.

The account of Lone Pine Five here is a little garbled, in that Jenny finds the spoon, not in a cave, but in an auction in the yard of the 'Rose and Crown' at Bishop's Castle, which sounds like the real-life Three Tuns there.