![]() A lovely snapshot of a bygone era and a truly historic event. One of aspects I appreciated the most was the enthralling descriptions of some of the pieces that were uncovered in the dig. Preston gives the reader enough hints as to their characters to let anyone with an imagination figure out who they are. None of the characters are deeply developed - but they don't need to be. Peggy is as bewildered by her marriage as she is enthralled by her finds at the dig. Basil Brown misses his wife, May, and worries about securing the site of the dig. Pretty frets about her young son, Robert. It's a story of ordinary people caught up in an extraordinary find - but the ordinariness of their lives is at least as important as the extraordinary find. Of course, it is Peggy who discovers the first really valuable artifact from the ship burial.The characters in the novel are all historical figures - and the author is the nephew of Peggy Piggot. The Anglo-Saxon ship burial reveals incredible artifacts that undermine theories about the Dark Ages and reveal the sophistication of 7th-8th century societies.The story is alternately narrated by three voices - Basil Brown, Edith Pretty and Peggy Piggott, a recent university graduate who has just married her tutor, Stuart Piggott, and is invited into the dig because she is small and light and will not disturb the remains. Pretty and her young son Robert live at Sutton Hoo House, and the mound that Basil Brown begins to excavate will be one of the most important archaeological discoveries in Britain. On the advice of the local museum director, she hires Basil Brown, an amateur archaeologist and soil expert, to unearth the mounds.The rest is history - and the stuff of this gently understated historical novel. Pretty, has finally decided to excavate the mounds on the estate - she and her husband had often discussed the prospect, and with war looming, she felt time was short. It's 1939 on the eve of Britain entering World War II and the German blitz. Their threads of love, loss, and aspiration weave a common awareness of the past as something that can never truly be left behind. As the war looms ever closer, engraved gold peeks through the soil, and each character searches for answers in the buried treasure. This fictional recreation of the famed Sutton Hoo dig follows three months of intense activity when locals fought outsiders, professionals thwarted amateurs, and love and rivalry flourished in equal measure. As the dig proceeds, it becomes clear that this is no ordinary find. Pretty, the widowed owner of the farm, has had her hunch confirmed that the mounds on her land hold buried treasure. In the long, hot summer of 1939, Britain is preparing for war, but on a riverside farm in Suffolk there is excitement of another kind. The story is truer than true, recalling the real-life moment British cello virtuoso Beatrice Harrison took her dignified instrument to her garden, and a songbird joined in.THE BASIS FOR THE NETFLIX FILM STARRING CAREY MULLIGAN, RALPH FIENNES, AND LILY JAMESĪ literary adventure that tells the story of a priceless buried treasure discovered in England on the eve of World War II ![]() “At first she couldn’t believe it, so she started playing a sonata, and the nightingale accompanied her.” One night she was playing a scale and a nightingale joined in. “In the summer evenings she used to practise in the garden. “There’s a wonderful cellist called Beatrice Harrison,” Peggy says. There’s a wonderful scene in which young archaeologist Peggy (Lily James), tells Rory (Johnny Flynn) of the time a cellist inadvertently played a duet with the nightingales inhabiting her garden. ![]() Is the story of the cellist and the nightingale real? Read more: Soprano sings jaw-dropping Handel aria from church pulpit > We’re also treated to some wonderful Handel at the garden party scene near the end, when a fanfare moment from the English composer’s Music for the Royal Fireworks is played out by a brass band, in celebration of the historic local findings. Sweeping strings and sounds from the natural world speak beautifully to the film’s British setting, with melancholy moments on the piano painting a picture of nostalgia for pre-war times and moments of wonder and discovery amplified by driving timpani lines. It embraces moments of silence and does not dominate, rather providing a melodious support for the film’s outstanding acting and script, and breathtaking Suffolk landscapes. Gregory’s music for The Dig is soft and subtle.
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