Realms of Gold

by Leonard Cottrell

New horizons
Return to Mycenae
The myth behind the myth
The deeper layers
Homer & the epic tradition
How much did "Homer" know?
Homer's portrait of Greece
The archaeologist's Mycenaeans
Crete & Mycenae
"Tiryns of the great walls"
Grave circle B
Mycenae & Egypt
The Dendra cuirass
Where was "sandy Pylos"?
The palace at Epano Englianos
The archaeology of Pylos
Was this Homer's world?
"Thus the watchers are guarding the coast"
Olympia, Delphi & the Bagnarotte
Men, women & monuments
Theseus: myth or reality?
The sanctuary of Artemis Brauronia
The treasure of Brauron
The corridors converge
Where is King Minos?
Storm over Knossos
Crete & Atlantis
On the edge of Asia
"Here they built the Argo"
"The great Achilles, whom we knew"
Index

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1963

About the author

Leonard Eric Cottrell was a prolific and popular British author and journalist. Many of his books were popularizations of the archaeology of ancient Egypt.

Leonard Cottrell was born in 1913 in Tettenhall, Wolverhampton, to William and Beatrice Cottrell (née Tootell). His father inspired his interest in history from a very young age. At King Edward's Grammar School, Birmingham, Leonard was notably only interested in English and history, in which he read widely.

In the 1930s, Cottrell toured the English countryside on his motorcycle, visiting prehistoric stone circles, burial mounds of the Bronze Age, medieval and Renaissance monuments. On those journeys, he was often accompanied by Doris Swain, whom he later married. After gaining experience writing articles on historical subjects for motoring magazines, he wrote his first documentary for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in 1937.

Cottrell was rejected by the RAF during World War II for medical reasons, but he joined the BBC in 1942 and was stationed in the Mediterranean with the RAF in 1944, as a war correspondent. His wartime experiences formed the basis of his book All Men are Neighbours (1947). He worked at the BBC until 1960, when he resigned and moved to a house overlooking the estuary of the River Kent in Westmoreland, Cumbria, where he stayed for the rest of his life, writing.

Among other achievements, Cottrell was the editor of the Concise Encyclopaedia of Archaeology (1965).

He was married and divorced twice, first to Doris Swain (divorced 1962) and Diana Bonakis (married 1965; divorced 1968). He had no children by either marriage.

Leonard Cottrell died on 6 October 1974.

Reviews

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is another worthy book by Leonard Cottrell. I know the book is more than 2/3 of a century old, but it's always a pleasure for me to read the work of the past generation of English scholars. Even when they're wrong, it's worth seeing how they get their head around a knotty subject like the Mycenaeans.

The main point of Realms of Gold is that the Mycenaeans were in essence of Greeks of Homer's time. I had always pigeon-holed them in my thinking as an entirely separate people, but they were Greeks, just not the Classical Greeks of Demosthenes, Thucydides, and the Philosophers.

Very likely some of Cottrell's sources are out of date, but he writes a good book.

[Sarah Kauthen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leonard Cottrell fanboys his way through ancient Greek archaeological sites in the 1960s. His interviews with important archaeologists of the time, such as Blegen and Papadimitriou, give the reader a sense of what it was like to be present during this exciting period of excavation.