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The Modern Antiquarian: A Pre-Millennial Odyssey Through Megalithic Britain
Looks at megalithic sites and monuments in Great Britain
438 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1998
15 people are currently reading
472 people want to read
About the author
Julian Cope
30 books91 followersJulian Cope (born Julian David Cope, on 21 October 1957) is a British rock musician, author, antiquary, musicologist, poet and cultural commentator. Originally coming to prominence in 1978 as the singer and songwriter in Liverpool post-punk band The Teardrop Explodes, he has followed a solo career since 1983 and initiated musical side projects such as Queen Elizabeth, Brain Donor and Black Sheep. Additional to his own work as a musician, Cope remains an avid champion of obscure and underground music.
Cope is also a recognised authority on Neolithic culture, an outspoken political and cultural activist, and a fierce critic of contemporary Western society (with a noted and public interest in occultism, paganism and Goddess worship).
As an author and commentator, he has written two successive volumes of autobiography called Head-On (1994) and Repossessed (1999); two volumes of archaeology called The Modern Antiquarian (1998) and The Megalithic European (2004); and three volumes of musicology called Krautrocksampler (1995), Japrocksampler (2007) and Detroitrocksampler.
Cope is also a recognised authority on Neolithic culture, an outspoken political and cultural activist, and a fierce critic of contemporary Western society (with a noted and public interest in occultism, paganism and Goddess worship).
As an author and commentator, he has written two successive volumes of autobiography called Head-On (1994) and Repossessed (1999); two volumes of archaeology called The Modern Antiquarian (1998) and The Megalithic European (2004); and three volumes of musicology called Krautrocksampler (1995), Japrocksampler (2007) and Detroitrocksampler.
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
September 12, 2008
ex pop star (now psych rawwk traveller) wants to write a lengthy tome on stone-age structures in britain (and europe in the follow up). publisher says your fans won't read it because it's $50 and it's about stone-henge and people who study that stuff won't read it because it's written by a hippy pop star. write book anyhow, get it published with huge glossy pics (including a few of your gothy wife with her tits out) as well as highly interpretive prose. watch in amusement as the fans buy it and love it and universities start adding it to curriculum because it's actually interesting. never would have guessed when i first heard "world shut your mouth"
March 25, 2024
Such a labour of love, idiosyncratic and wonderful
March 23, 2020
A sumptuous, expensive looking coffee table book with fabulous photos, glorious rainbow coloured pages and detailed descriptions of every stone circle, dolmen, fougou and all Megalithic sites in Britain. The slightly mystical interpretation was not quite for me, but all in all a joy to read.
February 27, 2019
Big. Beautiful. Seminal. Nice pictures
This is a big and utterly beautiful and fantastic book that everyone should have instead of a coffee table. I love Cope's attitude and ideas and his early writings about walks along neolithic routes were very inspiring to me. This led me off on a long walk along the Ridgeway to Avebury and got me out walking the streets of London, making notes and drawings.
Keep it in your car if you've got a big glove compartment and are very clean and tidy. Otherwise, treat it like a sacred object and pass it down through the generations like a family bible.
(I once queued up for ages at a Julian Cope signing for Modern Antiquarian and eventually gave up and went to the pub. Regretted it ever since. It's not that I cared about the book being worth anything, just some childlike wonder about the 'autograph'.)
This is a big and utterly beautiful and fantastic book that everyone should have instead of a coffee table. I love Cope's attitude and ideas and his early writings about walks along neolithic routes were very inspiring to me. This led me off on a long walk along the Ridgeway to Avebury and got me out walking the streets of London, making notes and drawings.
Keep it in your car if you've got a big glove compartment and are very clean and tidy. Otherwise, treat it like a sacred object and pass it down through the generations like a family bible.
(I once queued up for ages at a Julian Cope signing for Modern Antiquarian and eventually gave up and went to the pub. Regretted it ever since. It's not that I cared about the book being worth anything, just some childlike wonder about the 'autograph'.)
August 4, 2025
Thorson's are (were?) a publisher I associate more with wholefood cookery than epic explorations of British pre-history, but something about this concept and project by Julian Cope of The Teardrop Explodes fascinated me. I waited a long time to get hold of a copy, in the end succumbing to the Oxfam Online sale (where it was still, I think, the most expensive book I've ever purchased, and that includes niche textbooks)
It continued to be a difficult book to get hold of even once bought and the pages even more so - as a literal object it has to be one of the worst bound books with which I've had dealings. Indeed, a little put out that various places in Derbyshire are unmentioned, I wondered if those pages had simply dropped out, until I checked the gazeteer.
Mr Cope is big on mind-blowing and mine has been, realising just how much neolithic history is still there to be seen and far more dramatically than I had assumed (even though, as I say, it misses out places in my area) I don't have a major interest or level of knowledge, so I don't know how bonkers his various interpretations and theses are but I was certainly intrigued by his suggestion that everything went downhill for women when those Bronze Agers and their weapons came along (but weren't those flints sharp?) His insistence that it is the structures in the context of the natural landscape that matter has given me much more of an appreciation. He's interested in just being in these places as well as the satisfactions of knowledge and exploration.
The book opens with interesting essays and then moves into a far from dry gazeteer. Each entry has a contemporaneous description of his visit (mud, wind, rain, cold fingers often feature but then so do picnics and his wife, Dorian, and small children. There's a nappy change and messy squishing of strawberries) There are only slight hints to him fitting this all in around the (performing musician) 'day' job. There are close up and wider shots of the sites, some with people: he goes through a few hair changes in the course of his 'odyssey' and the people provide scale. Dorian appears in a startlingly sheer blouse at one point. Some sites are easy to get to - roadside, or even in one case with a road straight through a circle, others clearly required a good deal of planning, walking and permission. Permission was not always readily granted by the livestock. By 2025 some of the previous millennium's navigational issues are feeling distinctly period.
An absolute joy. I needed to get through the book to discuss for my book group's theme of 'a book by someone who wasn't a writer' - but feel faintly bereft now it is over.
It continued to be a difficult book to get hold of even once bought and the pages even more so - as a literal object it has to be one of the worst bound books with which I've had dealings. Indeed, a little put out that various places in Derbyshire are unmentioned, I wondered if those pages had simply dropped out, until I checked the gazeteer.
Mr Cope is big on mind-blowing and mine has been, realising just how much neolithic history is still there to be seen and far more dramatically than I had assumed (even though, as I say, it misses out places in my area) I don't have a major interest or level of knowledge, so I don't know how bonkers his various interpretations and theses are but I was certainly intrigued by his suggestion that everything went downhill for women when those Bronze Agers and their weapons came along (but weren't those flints sharp?) His insistence that it is the structures in the context of the natural landscape that matter has given me much more of an appreciation. He's interested in just being in these places as well as the satisfactions of knowledge and exploration.
The book opens with interesting essays and then moves into a far from dry gazeteer. Each entry has a contemporaneous description of his visit (mud, wind, rain, cold fingers often feature but then so do picnics and his wife, Dorian, and small children. There's a nappy change and messy squishing of strawberries) There are only slight hints to him fitting this all in around the (performing musician) 'day' job. There are close up and wider shots of the sites, some with people: he goes through a few hair changes in the course of his 'odyssey' and the people provide scale. Dorian appears in a startlingly sheer blouse at one point. Some sites are easy to get to - roadside, or even in one case with a road straight through a circle, others clearly required a good deal of planning, walking and permission. Permission was not always readily granted by the livestock. By 2025 some of the previous millennium's navigational issues are feeling distinctly period.
An absolute joy. I needed to get through the book to discuss for my book group's theme of 'a book by someone who wasn't a writer' - but feel faintly bereft now it is over.
June 2, 2023
6 month trek over the british isles i would happily do again. the first 150 pages of essays are brilliant, detailing mothergoddess worship in its beginning middle end forms, and providing a brilliant 300 page rainbow documented spine appendices that take you into detail of each site discussed in the essays and then some.
the best story in the book is definitely chapter 6 , margaret at the stones. the books past narrative trollops over 5000 years of history, and the way julian writes, if you don't agree with his pagan ideals (i do) you may need to cling to something /modern/ like margaret and her husband's scottish isle stories about stones from avebury to the hebrides and back. she is kind of a scientist detractor in early life, following alexander thom's astronimical observations about stonehenge in order to talk trash, but then becomes a bigger believe than ever later in life and helps map out some of her home island. when i return to the prose of this book this is where i will go first.
300 page Gazetteer is hit or miss honestly and the reason it took me 6 months to read this. julian's descrips are good but its constantly in "aw shucks" mode for me when, even with 600 pics or whatever, there is always something you can't "see" the way he sees it, sometimes with drawings filed instead of photographs that wouldn't keep; sometimes he tells you why, other times you're left "leaving the mystery" alone. avebury in england and uist and grampian in scotland stand out as having the best photos/sites/stories in this section. rollright, dwarfie stane, silbury and dunnideer stand out in my mind, in general. what magnificence!
reading this every day got tedious in some other areas, but don't feel you have to read every word like this megalith stalker. 50 poems accompany the photos and "ground notes" that julian pastes in for us, sometimes really impressing me with his impressions. if i'm being too much let me be too clear here: i loved this f'n book! it even had me picking up my pen for verse, which i will finish soon after i cross my trilithons and dot my cursuses! took me 10 years to find this book at a good price, very worth the weight!!
the best story in the book is definitely chapter 6 , margaret at the stones. the books past narrative trollops over 5000 years of history, and the way julian writes, if you don't agree with his pagan ideals (i do) you may need to cling to something /modern/ like margaret and her husband's scottish isle stories about stones from avebury to the hebrides and back. she is kind of a scientist detractor in early life, following alexander thom's astronimical observations about stonehenge in order to talk trash, but then becomes a bigger believe than ever later in life and helps map out some of her home island. when i return to the prose of this book this is where i will go first.
300 page Gazetteer is hit or miss honestly and the reason it took me 6 months to read this. julian's descrips are good but its constantly in "aw shucks" mode for me when, even with 600 pics or whatever, there is always something you can't "see" the way he sees it, sometimes with drawings filed instead of photographs that wouldn't keep; sometimes he tells you why, other times you're left "leaving the mystery" alone. avebury in england and uist and grampian in scotland stand out as having the best photos/sites/stories in this section. rollright, dwarfie stane, silbury and dunnideer stand out in my mind, in general. what magnificence!
reading this every day got tedious in some other areas, but don't feel you have to read every word like this megalith stalker. 50 poems accompany the photos and "ground notes" that julian pastes in for us, sometimes really impressing me with his impressions. if i'm being too much let me be too clear here: i loved this f'n book! it even had me picking up my pen for verse, which i will finish soon after i cross my trilithons and dot my cursuses! took me 10 years to find this book at a good price, very worth the weight!!
November 28, 2021
It's a gaudy, hefty, invigorating book. Julian Cope is quite inspiring in his dedication to ancient stone structures, and this book is roughly 50% enthusiastic amateur rambling and 50% solid, academic thoroughness. Part one is a collection of loosely connected essays telling a story about how we were all better off in pagan days when we were one with the circle of life, before Christianity and the Patriarchy ruined it all. Part two is a 'gazetteer', a page by page guide to just about every important neolithic site in Britain.
I enjoyed this immensely. I found his arguments convincing and it fired my enthusiasm for visiting more of these places.
It seems to sell for silly money so keep your eyes open for an occasional cheap second hand copy. I got mine cheap at Oxfam with a missing slipcase.
I enjoyed this immensely. I found his arguments convincing and it fired my enthusiasm for visiting more of these places.
It seems to sell for silly money so keep your eyes open for an occasional cheap second hand copy. I got mine cheap at Oxfam with a missing slipcase.
October 29, 2009
Totally fresh perspective on who we are. Quirky and homespun, dedicated and thorough. What fun. Floored genius.
July 2, 2013
An encyclopedia full of maps and fabulous photographs with descriptions of Megalithic Stones all over the UK.
One of those books you need a copy of in your car if you go exploring !
One of those books you need a copy of in your car if you go exploring !
Read
May 28, 2020all roads led to cope's discoveries
game changer
am going in for seconds
game changer
am going in for seconds
June 25, 2020
One to dip into while eating chocolate biscuits and drinking tea next to a real fire while the wind and rain beat down outside.
May 15, 2016
This is a fantastic introduction into Britain's Megalithic history. I enjoyed the stories, maps, and high quality photos accompanying each entry. This book makes for quite the travel guide for those interested, although it is probably too large and heavy for backpacking. It gives advice and directions on how to reach the sites. It is one of the most interesting reference books I have ever seen and I like to flip through the pages to discover new sites.
March 14, 2010
Julian turns a potentially dry subject into something quite special with his enthusiasm
October 5, 2010
Part ancient history, part philosophy, part guide-book, awl good.
December 31, 2011
Colorful, quirky exploration of Great Britain's megalithic heritage from the Archdrude himself--heathen punk-poet Julian Cope.
June 15, 2011
Contains all you need to know about the stones probably x
December 15, 2011
Interesting and unusual book let down by appalling binding. It's a big hardback and pages started falling out within about 2 weeks.
April 19, 2012
I love that it's actually a continuation of his memoir. And how he can't stop his life bleeding in. But what's going on with the black cover?
November 6, 2012
JC is a genius.
January 19, 2013
Never leave for a holiday without it. I love this book
September 10, 2014
I skim-read this - loved the photographs and found the ideas ingenious. But I didn't pay deep attention. Will hopefully look again!
June 3, 2013
Wonderfully done. Bit spooky. Funny as fuck.
July 14, 2016
A serious piece of work from the Druid/Kraut Rocker.
May 11, 2017
Probably our most prized reference book. A must.
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews