Sir – Your reviewer’s excellent notice (Past Times, March 15) of the new biography of John Aubrey, with his intimate connections with Oxford and his friendship with Anthony Wood, does not quite do full justice to that wonderful man.
He was also the first recorded English archaeologist to realise the significance of the stone circles of Avebury, Stonehenge and the Oxfordshire Rollright Stones.
His importance as an archaeologist is recorded in Aubrey Burl’s John Aubrey and Stone Circles — Britain’s First Archaeologist, from Avebury to Stonehenge (Stroud, Gloucestershire, Amberley Press, 2012, £25).
As an ‘incomer’ to Oxford, 50 years ago, I had known John Aubrey only for his Brief Lives, read when I was a schoolboy, but I now know that he was a more considerable figure than I had ever imagined.
I commend his archaeological record to your readers, in spite of the (in this context) embarrassing fact that the author of the book, Dr Burl, is my brother-in-law.
Russell Lawson, Oxford
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