Written by Bernard Cornwell
Read by Sean Barrett
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 128 Kbps
Unabridged

A Novel of 2000 BC

From the earliest times, human beings have looked at the sun and the moon, and at life and death, and have imagined gods who control such things, and looked for ways to control those gods. In Stonehenge, Bernard Cornwell, famous for his novels about Rifleman Sharpe's adventures in the Napoleonic wars and for a sequence of brutally realistic Arthurian novels, considers the men and women who built Stonehenge and Avebury. These stone circles are impressive enough today; but all the more so if you imagine shifting stones from Wales to Salisbury Plain by raft and roller, dressing them with burning fat and grindstones, hauling the lintel stones up tiers of platforms.

"The oxen were goaded again, and, finger's breadth by finger's breadth, the huge stone eased forward until half of it was poised and then the oxen tugged once more and Saban was shouting at the beasts' drivers to halt the animals because the stone was tipping at last. For a heartbeat, it seemed to balance on the ramp's edge, then its leading half crashed down onto the timbers, then the great boulder slid down the ramp to lodge against the hole's face."