Neolithic age

To read something by the Cumbria-born Sarah Hall is to enter a dizzying, earthy and often dystopian world where the elements rule and nature is blood red. Her nine previous short story collections and novels straddle life’s peripheries, often scratching at the limits of what it means to be human. ‘Mrs Fox’, one of her best known stories – and one of two for which she has won the BBC Short Story Prize – is a visceral tale about a woman who turns into a fox. In her 2021 novel Burntcoat, a virulent virus made Covid-19 look almost benign. Helm is a different beast again, one she has been working on for almost 20 years. Its title and main character is Britain’s only named wind, which hits the southwest slopes of Cross Fell, in Cumbria’s Eden Valley where Hall grew up.

When it comes to Stonehenge, we are like children continually asking why and never getting a conclusive answer. There are plenty of theories as to its purpose, ranging from the ludicrous to the dull, but perhaps we would be better off concentrating, as in this excellent book, more on how our ancestors got the stones up in the first place. Attention has always centred on the original bluestones which made up the first circle at Stonehenge, because they were brought, remarkably, all the way from Wales. These are the smaller – but still two-ton – megaliths, carved from the Preseli quarries in Pembrokeshire. It used to be thought they must have been transported by water, around the considerable circuit of the south-west coast and then up the River Avon.