Mike Pitts

So cleverly funny

Jilly Cooper, author of Rivals and Riders, dies aged 88 The author of 18 ‘bonkbuster’ novels including Riders, Rivals and Bella has died following a fall

I first read Jilly Cooper as a child when she had a column in the Sunday Times. Once she came to our home town Chichester, & joked about a music shop I knew called Southern Organs. Huge respect. You didn’t talk like that in my family

Jilly Cooper dies aged 88
www.theguardian.com/books/2025/o...

The mystery of Easter Island is finally SOLVED Finally scientists have discovered that there is a fruiter reason for the placement of Easter Island famous statues than any of us might have considered.

Island At The Edge Of The World by Mike Pitts: The mystery of Easter Island is finally SOLVED
“Revelatory… fascinating… wholly convincing”
It's true, it's in the Mail on Sunday ("fruiter"?)
The striking photo puzzled me until I realised it's back to front!
www.dailymail.co.uk/home/books/a...

Very sad to hear of the passing of Andy Jones, outstanding regional fieldworker, principal archaeologist with the Cornwall Archaeological Unit for 30+ years. He wrote often for me in British Archaeology, not least on the exceptional Whitehorse Hill bronze age burial
kernowgoth.org/in-memoriam/...

I found one of those feet!

Meanwhile in Oxford the Schwarzman Centre opens, an Arts & Humanities focus that if half its claims come true will transform the university’s cultural experience. A timely highlighting of the UK’s powerful creative industries by Irene Tracey. Spring in my step today!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4kR...

BM 2026! Alice Christophe-curated Hawai’i show “shaped with Native Hawaiian knowledge-bearers”, features Hawai’i-UK links - Kamehameha I’s gifts to George III (feathered cloak lent by our King), Kamehameha II & Kamāmalu in London in 1824 (& ?giving this 2.7m kiʻi to George IV) etc. Wonderful things!

Has the history of human evolution been rewritten? A new report from the field of human origins had sub-editors reaching for their hyperboles. A million-year-old skull, we have learnt, has rewritten humanity’s story. The finality of this is misleading...

Here’s my immediate reaction to the million year old skull that rewrites the history of humanity. Hyperbole aside, it’s a great piece of work and the implications, if you go with the paper’s drift, really are significant. Spectator online
www.spectator.co.uk/article/has-...

‘Tunnel vision’: how Israel is using archaeology to win US support for goals Scientists say Netanyahu government and its US backers are trying to construct a history shorn of all complexity

We should all call out Israeli corruption of archaeological practice: destroying Palestinian collections, tunnelling for remains & faking histories. Pointing out the errors is not political, it’s just about very bad archaeology
www.theguardian.com/world/2025/s...

STATUES! It’s said there are 1,000 on Rapa Nui. The real total is nearer 600, others are carvings in the rock. But 600! And the scale! Impressed by Hoa Hakananai’a in the British Museum? Here it is to the same scale as one dug out by Heyerdahl. How? WHY? Find out in Island at the Edge of the World!

Quite! Which is what the book’s all about

The 1786 French expedition to Easter Island brought a gardener who described productive soils, fields & cultivated trees. Why was this ignored by modern theories of starvation, war & collapse? Finding the answers allowed me to think anew about the Polynesian adventurers who discovered Rapa Nui

My book has controversial claims. Rapa Nui archaeology needs rethinking. Legendary histories still have a grip: they should be ditched as sources. This will not endear me to everyone! Doing fieldwork, Dale Simpson was asked: “Why conduct more research? Your answers are already in the oral tradition”

I'm further honoured by the @thespectator1828.bsky.social review being selected for the week's Spectator Out Loud, where you can hear reviewer Maggie Fergusson read out her piece about Island at the Edge of the World
www.spectator.co.uk/podcast/john...

Thank you Spectator! (Except for the last fatally incorrect paragraph). Island at the Edge of the World is in shops now
www.amazon.co.uk/Island-Edge-...

Francesco Mallegni, paleoanthropologist who recreated the faces of famous dead Italians He claimed that a skeleton buried under Florence cathedral was Giotto, and that Dante was much less ugly than we had thought

RIP Francesco Mallegni, 85. He claimed to find faces of famous people in anonymous skulls (“Dante Alighieri” 's “looks like a man who lived in the world") & promoted the Turin shroud as an original Christian relic
www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2...

Martin’s 1998 Sutton Hoo book is terrific, and this ship project is wonderful, this should be a good read

Meanwhile back at Stonehenge!

I do quote Boris (& like him was inspired by Heyerdahl at school). But unsurprisingly, I do not, as the review implies, go with his idea of Islanders bowing down to superior Europeans: they did NOT pull down all their statues at the sight of Christians! Lovely review, but get the book for the truth!

The mystery of Rapa Nui’s moai may be solved Boris Johnson claims that in his first year at Oxford he attended just one lecture. Delivered in the crepuscular gloom of the Pitt Rivers Museum, it was about Rapa Nui, the tiny Pacific island 2,200 m...

Island at the Edge reviewed in the Spectator:
“he is good at bringing alive human stories – particularly about the indigenous islanders & how, after 20 generations of keeping their own company, they were shockingly assaulted by the outside world… a gripping story”
www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-...

@antiquaries.bsky.social Salon: Arthur Freeman FSA, writer, antiquarian bookseller, died at home in London on 30 May 2025

"Secondhand hearses and ambulances have the best suspension for transporting books and were much in demand for this purpose in the States"
www.sheila-markham.com/interviews/a...

I'm talking about Easter Island's extraordinary story tonight at the Gloucester History Festival. This extract from my book expresses an underlying theme that feels more widely relevant (with one of my photos). Hope to see you there!
www.gloucesterhistoryfestival.co.uk/events/forgo...

Oh my, this speaks for all of us in all our worlds

Let me know what you see! I think it's all quite different from when I was there in 1994

It's going to be published in the US in January if you can wait that long. It's the same book, but occasional British English has been translated into American, the referencing system is different, etc. Whichever you get, I hope you enjoy it!

You can read my take on this script in Island at the Edge of the World (hint: it was part of a deeply theatrical expression and celebration of island identity when that appeared to be challenged)

And look where that just came in!

He plays quite a clever constituency MP, endlessly turning up to local events or just to celebrate local people and places. Good for him, but local representation happens in Westminster and I really wish I was represented by someone with genuine humanity & sense of British global identity

Rosalyn Drexler obituary Artist, novelist, playwright and wrestler whose pop art collages dealt with gender violence and racism

An extraordinary artist. When can we have a show here?
www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

Ken Follett’s World Without End The Welsh thriller author on producing such a vast archive—and the lure of Stonehenge, the subject of his latest book.

"KEN FOLLETT: I was reading a book by Mike Pitts called How to Build Stonehenge..."

Frankly, with Circle of Days (out Sep 23) and How to Build Stonehenge, you really won't need any more books on that particular one (though I admit Ken's promo video leaves me standing)

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