Current Programme

Dinner at Strada restaurant in Colchester at 7.30pm. Please contact Bertha for booking.

Alexandra Richardson is giving a talk about Alexander Hardcastle and his archaeological work on the Greek temples of Agrigento. The talk will be in English and questions can be taken in Italian. The meeting starts as usual at 19:00 but the talk will commence after 19:30. Alexandra will bring some copies of her book that she will sign.

Background:

Alexandra Richardson was born in New York and has lived much of her adult life in Italy. She has worked in Bangkok for USIA, in New York for Newsweek Magazine, and in Milan for Selezione dal Reader's Digest. Since marriage, she has been a freelance feature writer and columnist for various Italian, American and English periodicals. She has collaborated on books with James Michener and Lawrence Elliott and contributed the entire Italian section of A Dictionary of Foreign Quotations, edited by Anthony Lejeune and published by Stacey International

Here is a review of her book by Oxbow Books:

Passionate Patron: The Life of Alexander Hardcastle by Alexandra Richardson

Alexander Hardcastle's name is little known today, especially in comparison with such figures as Howard Carter and Arthur Evans, but his archaeological work in Sicilyand Etruriadeserves to be ranked with theirs. Alexandra Richardson's study of his full and in some ways tragic (he was invalided home from the Boer War with shell shock, and ended his life in an insane asylum in Agrigento) life is detailed, sympathetic and readable. She gives vivid descriptions of the Victorian middle-class society in which he grew up, and his dogged work of excavation in Sicily. 143p b/w illus (Archaeopress 2009)