The Dig

In the long hot summer of 1939 Britain is preparing for war. But on a riverside farm in Suffolk there is excitement of another kind: Mrs Pretty, the widowed farmer, has had her hunch proved correct that the strange mounds on her land hold buried treasure. As The Dig proceeds against a background of mounting national anxiety, it becomes clear that this is no ordinary find...

John Preston’s recreation of the Sutton Hoo dig — the greatest Anglo-Saxon discovery ever in Britain — brilliantly and comically dramatizes three months of intense activity when locals fought outsiders, professionals thwarted amateurs, and love and rivalry flourished in equal measure.