Stonehenge News and Information

This is not a polemic, but a long reflection on Stonehenge, archaeology, conservation and the modern world. So as not to interrupt the read, I have put no links in the text. There are some at the end.

In 2014 the president of the United States visited Britain’s most famous ancient monument. Barack Obama was on his way home after a trip to Estonia and a NATO summit in Wales. What better chance to see Stonehenge, he said afterwards, and tick something off his bucket list?

The Marine One helicopter flew over the stones and landed at a nearby military base in rural Wiltshire. A long motorcade of great black vehicles drove Obama to the site – using a backroad to avoid the traffic – and with only a few hours’ notice, English Heritage curator Heather Sebire showed him round. “The visit was his idea,” she told me. “It was…