Mortimer Wheeler - Adventurer in Archaeology

Sir Mortimer Wheeler was a man of extraordinary energy and powers of leadership. He threw himself into the rediscovery of the past through archaeology. Since he was a man of action, a lover of adventure, too impatient for bookish scholarship, he chose to concentrate on excavation, making it more scientific and purposeful. Although he raised British archaeology to new heights, and made himself the greatest excavator of his age, he never forgot that he was `digging up people.' His two famous excavations of the 1930s, at Verulamium and Maiden Castle, attracted thousands, a result of which he sought through the skilful use of the press, for he always believed that the discoveries of archaeology should be shared with the public. In the 1950s he appeared on television in the enormously successful `Animal, Vegetable, Mineral?'...